This program's mission is to provide students with:

  • Advanced knowledge in current concepts in molecular, cellular, and genetic processes that contribute to the development and treatment of cancer
  • Specialized training in experimental methodology used to study cancer in a laboratory setting
  • Required shadowing of clinical oncologists to help identify clinically-relevant research questions leading to projects with a potential impact on cancer patients

Learn about our program's curriculum

Curriculum Overview

The Graduate College requires the satisfactory completion of 72 semester hours in order to obtain a Ph.D.

Required Courses

For the first year, students take common courses with other Biomedical Science students.

Cancer is a term that encompasses over 210 different types of malignancies, each with a unique set of biological, etiological, and clinical features. Cancer researchers continue to widen their scope as more is learned, requiring a breadth of knowledge in many areas of research (e.g. cell biology, genetics, immunology, and cell metabolism) to understand the complexities of cancer etiology and treatment.

The Cancer Biology Program provides this knowledge through classroom and research training leading to a PhD degree, and preparing students for a variety of career paths in academic, clinical, and industry environments dealing with the study and/or treatment of cancer.

A campus visual from the Carver College of Medicine outdoor lawn space.

Ready to apply?

You can learn more about the application process and requirements here.

Events

REDCap Basic Training

Tuesday, August 4, 2026 10:00am to 11:30am
Virtual

This is the first step in the REDCap training series. In this training, we will build a new REDCap project from scratch and cover basic features such as:

• Building forms with proper field types and validation
• Assigning user permissions
• Project backup and overview with data dictionary, codebook, pdf, and xml
• Ensuring your project works properly by testing with real world application
• Making mid-study modifications safely after having started data collection in production
• Creating and...

REDCap Intermediate Training

Wednesday, August 5, 2026 10:00am to 11:00am
Virtual

This is the second step in the REDCap training series. In this training we will cover basic and intermediate features such as:
• Outputting data automatically with calculated fields
• Collecting the same data points multiple times with longitudinal and one-to-many data collection
• Standardizing your data to industry standards with ontologies and the REDCap Instrument Library
• Ways to customize your data entry experience with action tags
• Viewing data with reports, dashboards, and charts
• And more

T...

REDCap Surveys Training

Thursday, August 6, 2026 10:00am to 11:00am
Virtual

This is the third step in the REDCap training series. In this training, we will cover survey configuration and distribution such as:

Allowing potential participants to self-initiate participation in your study with public surveys

Manually and automatically sending surveys

Administering electronic consent (e-consent) forms

Controlling survey access with conditional logic and survey login

This training is a demo and not hands-on. After this training you will have a basic understanding of surveys in...