By choos­ing the cross-dis­ci­pli­nary bioin­for­mat­ics pro­gramme, it is now pos­si­ble to devel­op mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary skills in both biol­o­gy (UTC-GB) and com­put­er sci­ence (UTC-GI). Teach­ing began in Sep­tem­ber 2025.

The new GB and GI pro­gramme, enti­tled Bioin­for­mat­ics opened in Sep­tem­ber 2025. At the inter­face between biol­o­gy, com­put­er sci­ence and mod­el­ling, bioin­for­mat­ics is a sci­en­tif­ic field with mul­ti­ple func­tions in the pro­cess­ing and analy­sis of mas­sive bio­log­i­cal data. Thanks to tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions that make it pos­si­ble to gen­er­ate a very large amount of data quick­ly at low cost, bioin­for­mat­ics is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant in engi­neer­ing, research and devel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the med­ical, envi­ron­men­tal and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sec­tors. At UTC-Com­pieg­ne, the bioin­for­mat­ics pro­gramme has been devel­oped joint­ly by the bio­log­i­cal engi­neer­ing and com­put­er engi­neer­ing depart­ment, aimed at offer­ing a sol­id edu­ca­tion for engi­neer­ing stu­dents who wish seek­ing a bal­ance between biol­o­gy, com­put­er sci­ence and data analy­sis. “Stu­dents who fol­low this cross-dis­ci­pli­nary pro­gramme will obtain an engi­neer­ing degree in bio­log­i­cal engi­neer­ing or com­put­er engi­neer­ing, depend­ing on the elec­tive spe­cial­ist major field they choose. Their degree will be enriched with the bioin­for­mat­ics and bio­sta­tis­tics skills nec­es­sary for pro­cess­ing omics data relat­ed to bio­log­i­cal process­es and derived from the fields of health and the envi­ron­ment, through the use of machine learn­ing mod­els or the design of mol­e­c­u­lar data­bas­es,” explains Prof. Yolande Per­rin, direc­tor of the Bio­log­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at UTC, 2019–2025.

A virtuous dialogue between future engineers in the biology and computer science fields

The teach­ing teams from both depart­ments were already present for the launch lec­ture on Mon­day 16 June, 2025. The depart­ment heads, Pro­fes­sors Yolande Per­rin and Marie-Hélène Abel, the branch man­agers, Murielle Dufresne and Meh­di Serairi, and the co-man­agers of the pro­gramme, Irene Maf­fuc­ci and Cyprien Gilet, pre­sent­ed the con­tent of the pro­gramme and explained the rea­sons behind its cre­ation. Around forty stu­dents attend­ed the event and were able to ask ques­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly about the sec­tors and pro­fes­sions tar­get­ed and the val­i­da­tion of skills accord­ing to the GB and GI branch­es of study. There are few pro­grammes of this type in France. “UTC trains gen­er­al­ist engi­neers in these fields. At our uni­ver­si­ty, com­put­er engi­neers are able to work in many sec­tors, as are bio­log­i­cal engi­neers. Jobs in the bioin­for­mat­ics sec­tor require knowl­edge in both of these fields. Our bio­log­i­cal engi­neers will there­fore acquire enhanced skills in com­put­er sci­ence and data min­ing, and our com­put­er engi­neers will acquire enhanced skills in bio­log­i­cal data analy­sis. There was a desire to bring our two depart­ments togeth­er. We con­duct­ed a sur­vey among stu­dents in the core cur­ricu­lum, which revealed a def­i­nite inter­est in the devel­op­ment of this cross-dis­ci­pli­nary pro­gramme. Around forty stu­dents are enrolled in this very first cohort,” says Prof. Marie-Hélène Abel, Direc­tor of the Com­put­er Sci­ence Depart­ment. The bioin­for­mat­ics pro­gramme will train engi­neers to com­mu­ni­cate in a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary con­text, at the inter­face between biol­o­gy and com­put­er sci­ence, with the abil­i­ty to under­stand com­put­er analy­sis tools and make choic­es for ‘biol­o­gists,’ plus the abil­i­ty to under­stand expec­ta­tions and pro­pose data pro­cess­ing solu­tions for ‘com­put­er scientists.’

KD