Why choose MCIBS at Penn State?
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Penn State is a thriving research university with research expenditures totaling $1.44 billion in the 2024-2025 fiscal year. For more information go to the Office of the VP for Research.
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The MCIBS Program is home to a friendly and supportive graduate student community, and faculty members who truly value them.
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The area around Penn State is beautiful with excellent opportunities for hiking, swimming in lakes, and skiing, among other outdoor activities.
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Penn State offers numerous athletic and cultural opportunities.
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Housing is relatively inexpensive, and offers the opportunity to live on your own, or with roommates if you prefer.
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It is quiet and peaceful here, but within driving distance of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and New York City.
Interdisciplinary Education
The MCIBS graduate program bridges numerous departments and colleges. It is designed to take advantage of the dynamic and diverse research community at Penn State. Students are encouraged to learn from a variety of disciplines and approaches while digging into their own research problems. They can choose a lab from any life science department.
Here are some ways the program encourages an integrative approach:
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Students take three courses in the first year that expose them to a variety of scientific approaches: MCIBS 590 Colloquium, MCIBS 503 Core Course, and MCIBS 592 Seminars are structured to introduce students to a wide range of topics, from model systems of plants, sea anemones, Drosophila, and mice, to seminars ranging from bioinformatics to cell biology to toxicology.
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Students choose a course with a quantitative foundation that is based on their interests; this could be population genetics, statistics, or bioinformatics.
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Students can choose to rotate in three labs that span more than 15 departments, ranging from Biochemistry and Molecular Biology to Biomedical Engineering to Entomology.
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Students continue to engage with other students in the program through retreats and other activities during their entire graduate career, and through peers, they learn about a wide variety of research questions and approaches.
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The MCIBS program is embedded in a vibrant research community, and students have access to scientists who focus on materials research, who use statistical approaches or physics frameworks to address biological problems, who design algorithms to extract information from data, and who can help think through whatever challenge arises in the course of investigating the thesis topic.
Admissions
Learn about the admissions process, graduate school and program requirements, and more as we welcome you to Penn State!
Funding Your Graduate Degree
You will be guaranteed financial support — in the form of a stipend plus tuition grant-in-aid — through year five of your Ph.D. studies, provided that you fulfill the following requirements:
- remain in good academic standing
- maintain satisfactory research performance
- satisfactorily fulfill your assistantship duties
- adhere to all University policies and standards
- conduct yourself professionally at all times
MCIBS Graduate Student Spotlight
Hear directly from MCIBS graduate students about their research, experiences, and what led them to Penn State and the Huck Institutes.
Student Spotlight Videos