Cross Disciplinary Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences (XDBio)

The XDBio Program is a fully-funded, interdisciplinary PhD program for graduate scholars in partnership with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Each XDBio student, supported by an advisory committee, designs their own personalized curriculum, guided by their unique research interests. The XDBio Program gives students the freedom to pursue novel research questions, facilitating highly interdisciplinary research training that bridges biology, engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, and medicine.

Graduate scholars in the program spend their first year at Johns Hopkins and then reside at Janelia for the remaining years of the program to conduct their thesis research in any of our four research areas. Scholars have two mentors, a research mentor at Janelia and a programmatic mentor at Johns Hopkins that chairs the scholar's thesis committee. Graduate degrees are granted by Johns Hopkins University.

The program is intentionally small, which allows us to support each scholar's individual needs. Graduate scholars benefit from considerable personal attention in the laboratory to facilitate their training and professional development. Thesis research is enhanced by access to Janelia's extensive cutting-edge Shared Resources, the ease of collaboration across research areas, and the opportunity to work directly with (or even as) tool builders to develop new biosensors, microscopes, electronics, computational tools, and more.

In addition to research training, scholars can participate in the many conferences hosted at Janelia, mentor junior lab members, and benefit from professional development opportunities in science communication and career development including workshops on grant writing, poster design, elevator pitches, and personal career coaching.

If you have any questions about the program, the application or the application process, please email Erik Snapp at snappe@janelia.hhmi.org