Welcome to your CSE Honours year. The Honours year is an exciting opportunity for you to put all your skills you’ve learnt in your undergraduate courses into practice, in addition to potentially learning new skills and tools. We have prepared this guide to primarily cater for students enrolled in the the School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), are getting ready to start their Honours year and are interested in pursuing a bioinformatics or computational biology related project. This guide thus applies to not just Bioinformatics Engineering majors, but also Advanced Computer Science, Software Engineering and Computer Engineering majors.
The CSE Honours program comprises undertaking a full-time research project supervised by a CSE researcher or approved external supervisor in an affiliated institution. At CSE, students work on their Honours thesis over 3 consecutive terms. We use the course titles Thesis A, Thesis B and Thesis C to refer to these 3 stages.
Bioinformatics and computational biology projects have a huge range, from investigating hypothesis-driven research in biomedical and life sciences, tackling questions that advance human knowledge, to application-focused research that has potential medical and industrial benefits for society. Some projects require prior biological knowledge, while others you can learn as you go.
Further to developing skills in scientific research, the CSE Honours program aims to equip students with skills in critical thinking and communication, useful in both industry and academic workplaces.
On behalf of the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Research group, we welcome you to your CSE Honours Year. Please read this guide carefully and we will be happy answer any questions you may have.
Sara Ballouz and Raymond Louie