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

Skills for Educators: Effective and Efficient Clinical Teaching

Thursday, November 12, 2026 8:30am to 11:30am
University of Iowa Health Care University Campus
Develop effective and efficient approaches to teaching in the context of patient care.

REDCap Data Handling

Thursday, November 12, 2026 10:00am to 11:00am
Virtual

This is the sixth and final step in the REDCap training series. In this training we won't use REDCap at all. Instead, we will cover ways to view and manage your exported REDCap data in Microsoft Excel and Sublime Text such as:

Populating data from one Excel sheet to another with vlookup()

Seeing specific data with column sorting and filtering

Ensuring data is cohesive by creating tables

Looking at how data relates to other data by creating pivot tables

Transforming unusable data to a usable format...

Biochemistry Seminar: "Principles of MHC-I Peptide Selection in Antigen Presentation" promotional image

Biochemistry Seminar: "Principles of MHC-I Peptide Selection in Antigen Presentation"

Thursday, November 12, 2026 10:30am to 11:20am
Medical Education Research Facility

Principles of MHC-I Peptide Selection in Antigen Presentation

Presented by

James Lee, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Microbiology
NYU Langone Health