The doctorate in Immunology and Immunotherapeutics program affords you the opportunity to concentrate in immunological areas including, but not limited to cellular and molecular immunology, immunology of infectious diseases (host-pathogen interactions), translational immunology (immunotherapeutic and immuno-oncology, vaccine development) and systems immunology.
You’ll have the opportunity to focus your curriculum through a selection of advanced electives in immunology and related courses.
To successfully earn a PhD in Immunology and Immunotherapeutics, you’ll complete a minimum of 80 credits, and you’ll be required to have a first or co-first author publication before graduation. Completion of a written doctoral thesis and oral defense are also required.
All dissertation research, instruction and mentorship will be provided by program faculty. Learn more about our program faculty.
Core Courses
Using a combination of didactic teaching and in-class discussion, this course provides students with an understanding of basic immunological concepts. The lectures describe the various components of the innate and adaptive immune systems to provide the student with a detailed understanding of the development and function of individual immune components and their interactions in concert. This course is team taught by faculty experts.
This Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity Seminar Series will host nationally and internationally recognized speakers on a twice monthly basis throughout the semester. This course will educate students in how to prepare for and comprehend these seminars through classroom journal club-format discussions and submission of written-format summary statements. Students are expected to attend all seminars and journal club sessions.
In this course, students will learn about complex, cutting-edge immunological concepts and how they relate to specific diseases. Students will expand their knowledge of general immune mechanisms as learned in MEDMCIM 7010 to understand the plasticity and specificity of immune responses in health and diseases. An emphasis will be placed on the development of critical thinking skills via literature searches, reading, and preparing an oral presentation on selected topics of immunology and via group discussions. Students will develop scientific writing and analytical skills through preparing a written commentary for each topic.
This course will introduce students to the basic principles of grant writing. Student must have a dissertation project about which they can write a proposal in order to enroll.
This course, is an intensive, application-oriented survey of methods used during the course of the design, implementation and evaluation of biomedical informatics platforms, including clinical information systems, decision support systems, databases, data capture instruments, data visualization tools and other analytical "pipelines". These methods span a broad spectrum from information needs assessments to systems evaluation.
This research-focused course will allow students the opportunity to conduct dissertation research under the supervision of one of the I2GP faculty members.
This research-focused course will allow students the opportunity to conduct dissertation research under the supervision of one of the I2GP faculty members.
Discussion format class in which faculty-selected articles that are foundational to the fields of immunology and microbial pathogenesis will be presented and discussed.
A discussion course based on case scenarios dealing with ethical issues facing biomedical researchers, such as publishing practices, confidentiality, mentoring.
This research-focused course will allow students the opportunity to participate in research rotations under the supervision of Immunology and Immunotherapeutics graduate program (I2GP) faculty members prior to selecting a dissertation research laboratory.
Sample Electives
Epigenetics, BIOPHRM 5555
Vaccine Immunology, BSGP 7880
Cancer Immunology: Critical Journal Readings, BSGP 7900
Host‐Pathogen Interactions, BSGP 7950
Translational Neuroimmunology, HTHRHSC 7595
Translational Neuroimmunology, NEURO 7000
Cellular Mechanisms and Pathogenesis of Inflammation, PATHOL 7847
New courses in Systems Immunology and Advanced Immuno-oncology will also be offered
