M.Sc in Biological Sciences

M.Sc in Biological Sciences

This is a 3-year program. Students start in July each year, and join labs to which they have been assigned in their offer letter. These assignments are strongly based on their preferences ascertained during the interview process - we do not want unhappy students wandering our hallways! If you are truly flexible and open in what you want to do, say so; if you have a genuine preference, please let us know and we'll do the best we can to accommodate it.

MSc students attend Basic Core courses together with the PhD and Int PhD students. The 12 credit requirement is satisfied by these courses, after which MSc students engage in full time research. On consultation with their advisors, advanced courses may also be attended. MSc students are offered the same diverse training experiences as their Int PhD counterparts, all of which contribute to making a good scientist. Each lab has lab meetings in which experiments are discussed suggestions are offered, and the department has weekly seminars from invited speakers as well as journal clubs in which research papers are critiqued. Students often spend a few months in other labs in India or abroad, to learn a new technique that they require for their work. In addition, students travel to scientific meetings within India and abroad and present their work to the broader community in their field. Besides this, students have opportunities to present lectures or TA a course, to engage in informal mentoring of junior students, to get involved in TIFR's annual public outreach events, to give lectures or seminars at colleges in Mumbai, to judge school science festivals, to create new exciting tools to take science to schools- all these enhance the research training we offer.

At the end of their MSc training, our students get accepted to PhD programs in top-notch labs all over the world.