Areas of focus include neurophysiology, endocrinology, and gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and renal physiology. Students select advanced and elective courses in physiology, neurobiology, genetics, molecular biology, signal transduction, cell biology, and mechanisms of disease that match their special areas of interest. Research rotations introduce students to faculty laboratories and develop and broaden their research experience.
Students join the lab of their research adviser within the first year of the program.
Course work and the qualifying examinations are completed by the end of the second year. The dissertation proposal is examined during the third year. The Ph.D. degree typically requires four to five years to complete. Teaching experience for graduate students is available in preprofessional courses, graduate school and medical school courses as lecturers, small-group instructors, and teaching assistants. The department has extensive, well-equipped laboratories for biophysical, biochemical, and molecular biological research.