Students pursuing the M.S. degree in Neuroscience must complete a minimum of 31 credits of relevant work at the graduate level. The M.S. degree requirements have been designed to provide a comprehensive yet flexible program to students who are pursuing an M.S. degree exclusively, and students who plan to pursue a PhD degree later.
Matriculated students will be assigned an academic advisor from the neuroscience program. In consultation with the academic advisor, the student will prepare a Plan of Study outlining the selections that will satisfy the M.S. degree requirements. This Plan of Study must then be approved by the Program’s Review Committee, which consists of faculty members from each of the participating departments.
Core Neuroscience Coursework Requirements (Minimum of 19 Credits)
A student in the M.S. program must take courses to satisfy each of the following requirements:
Requirements Minimum Credits
- At least three Neuroscience courses (Note 1) 9
- At least one Biology courses (Note 2) 3
- At least one Computer Science course (Note 2) 3
- One Bioethics course (Note 3) 1
- One Scientific Writing or Experimental Design course (Note 4) 3
NOTES
- Chosen from the list of graduate NEU courses.
- Chosen from the corresponding lists of Program Elective Courses below
- For example, BB 551 Research Integrity in the Sciences or ID 500 Responsible Conduct of Research
- For example, BB 553 Experimental Design and Statistics in the Life Sciences, MA 546 Design and Analysis of Experiments. Courses such as ID 527
Fundamentals of Scientific Teaching and Pedagogy are currently offered for no credit and will be considered for meeting this requirement at which time they are offered to students for credit.
In addition to the 19 credits in the Core Neuroscience Coursework Requirement, M.S. students must complete either the Thesis Option or the Non-thesis Option described below. Students supported with a Teaching Assistantship, Research Assistantship or Fellowship for more than one academic year are required to do the Thesis Option.
M.S. Thesis Option
Students in the M.S. thesis option must complete a 9-credit thesis. Students interested in research, and in particular those who are considering pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Neuroscience or a related area, are strongly encouraged to select the M.S. thesis option. The thesis must be advised or co-advised by a faculty member affiliated with the Neuroscience Program. If the advisor is not a tenure-track faculty at WPI, then a Neuroscience affiliated tenure-track faculty must serve as the thesis co-advisor. A thesis proposal must be submitted to and approved by the student’s advisor(s) and the Neuroscience Faculty Steering Committee before the student can register for more than three thesis credits. Upon approval of the thesis proposal, the Steering Committee will appoint a thesis reader, who should be a faculty member affiliated with the Neuroscience program from a department different to that (those) of the thesis advisor(s). The thesis reader will serve as an examiner for the student’s thesis. The student then must satisfactorily complete a written thesis that is approved by the thesis advisor(s) and the thesis reader, and present the thesis results to the Neuroscience faculty in a public presentation.
Non-Thesis Option
Students in the M.S. non-thesis option must complete the remainder of the 31 credits required for the M.S. degree using one or both of the following choices:
- A 3-6 credit research or practice-oriented internship. All non-thesis students are strongly encouraged to pursue this choice. The internship is to be carried out in cooperation with a sponsoring organization or affiliated research lab, and must be approved and overseen by a faculty member affiliated with the Neuroscience Program. The faculty member is responsible for supervising the internship and ensuring that the internship has sufficient rigor and content for graduate-level neuroscience work. Internships will often focus on applied projects in an industry setting, although internships could also be completed in a research lab. Students will produce a written report at the conclusion of the internship. The format for the report—which is significantly shorter and less formal than a thesis—will be determined by the student’s advisor. Students will also be encouraged to present their work to the Neuroscience faculty in a public presentation.
- Additional Program Elective Courses. Elective courses must include one Neuroscience course (in addition to the three Neuroscience courses in the Core Neuroscience Requirements) and any additional graduate courses on the list of Program Elective Courses below.
Program Elective Courses
Students in the Neuroscience M.S. program may take program electives, as needed, to satisfy the remainder of the 31-credit degree requirement, and to tailor their Neuroscience degree program to areas of personal interest. An elective can be any graduate course listed below, although students are expected to select electives to produce a consistent program of study. Other graduate courses, graduate research credits, or ISGs not on this list may be used with prior approval of the Faculty Steering Committee, and if consistent with the student’s Plan of Study.
List of Elective Courses:
Relevant Neuroscience courses:
NEU 501 Neuroscience
NEU 502 Neural Plasticity
NEU 503 Computational Neuroscience
NEU 504 Advanced Psychophysiology
NEU 505 Brain-Computer Interaction
Relevant Bioinformatics and Computational Biology courses:
BCB 501/BBT 581 Bioinformatics
BCB 502/CS 582 Bio visualization
BCB 503/CS 583 Biological and Biomedical Database Mining
BCB 504/MA 584 Statistical Methods in Genetics and Bioinformatics
BCB 510 Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Seminar
Relevant Biology and Biotechnology courses:
BBT 561 Model Systems: Experimental Approaches and Applications
BBT 581/ BCB 501 Bioinformatics
BB570/CH 555 Cell Signaling
Relevant Biomedical Engineering courses:
BME 550 Tissue Engineering
BME 555 BioMEMS and Tissue Micro engineering
BME 560 Physiology for Engineers
BME 583 Biomedical Microscopy and Quantitative Imaging
Relevant Chemistry and Biochemistry courses:
CH 538 Medicinal Chemistry
CH 541 Membrane Biophysics
CH 555D Drug and Regulations
CH 555R Drug Safety and Regulatory Compliance
CH 555/PH597 Cell Mechanics
CH 555/BB570 Cell Signaling
Relevant Computer Science courses:
CS 5007 Introduction to Applications of Computer Science with Data Structures and Algorithms
CS 5084 Introduction to Algorithms: Design and Analysis 84
CS 528 Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing
CS 534 Artificial Intelligence
CS 539 Machine Learning
CS 541/DS 541 Deep Learning
CS 542 Database Management Systems
CS 546 Human-Computer Interaction
CS 548 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
CS/RBE 549 Computer Vision
CS/SEME 565 User Modeling
CS/SEME 566 Graphical Models for Reasoning under Uncertainty
CS/SEME 567 Empirical Methods for Human-Centered Computing
CS 573 Data Visualization
CS 584 Algorithms: Design and Analysis
CS 585/DS 503 Big Data Management
CS 586/DS 504 Big data Analytics
Relevant Data Science courses:
DS 501 Introduction to Data Science
DS 502/MA 543 Statistical Methods for Data Science
Relevant Mathematical Sciences courses:
MA 508 Mathematical Modeling
MA 543/DS 502 Statistical Methods for Data Science
MA 510/CS 522 Numerical Methods
MA 511 Applied Statistics for Engineering and Scientists
MA 542 Regression Analysis
MA 546 Design and Analysis of Experiments
MA 550 Time Series Analysis
MA 556 Applied Bayesian Statistics