Biology grad students have portal to Web info

A new Web site for the Harvard Integrated Life Sciences (HILS) program went live earlier this month, providing a single electronic portal for those interested in graduate study of any field of biology at Harvard. Sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the site is located at http://www.gsas.harvard.edu/hils.

HILS links and coordinates life sciences graduate programs in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, and Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Its new Web site also provides information on two newly approved FAS doctoral programs, Systems Biology and Chemical Biology.

“One goal we had was to provide up-to-date information from a single site; a second was an integrated look at the continuum of programs,” says Christopher T. Walsh, chair of the HILS coordinating committee and Hamilton Kuhn Professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at HMS. “We also wanted to address questions students often ask, from what faculty are affiliated with the 11 Ph.D. programs that constitute HILS to queries on intra- and interprogram flexibility for taking courses and pursuing research opportunities.”

The new site, Walsh adds, provides prospective and current graduate students, as well as program heads and participating faculty, with a unified view of the full sweep of graduate education and research across Harvard’s life sciences faculties.