Our first-year Program in Biomedical Sciences (PiBS) offers students a common foundation in biomedical sciences. Students do not commit to one of our eight biomedical science programs or laboratories until after completing a minimum of three lab rotations. This option allows students time to explore their interests before committing to a dissertation laboratory.
The following graduate programs accept students from our first year PiBS program:
- Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
- Cancer Biology
- Cellular Physiology & Molecular Biophysics
- Human Genetics & Genomics
- Microbiology & Immunology
- Molecular & Cellular Pharmacology
- Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology
- Neuroscience
Students Interested in Direct Admission
The primary admission route to the Cancer Biology graduate program (CAB) is through the PIBS umbrella program. Within the PIBS application, you can indicate your interest in Cancer Biology. This will ensure that the scoring of your application involves representatives of the CAB program. As a student admitted through PIBS, you may rotate across all programs, or you may choose to focus your rotations on CAB member laboratories. At the end of year one, you would join the CAB program.
We also have a “direct-to-mentor" admission option. However, for the CAB program, this mode of entry requires that the mentor and student already have a prior work relationship at UM for a long enough time to confirm the best fit. Students applying by this route must contact the cancer biology graduate program ahead of time to evaluate whether they qualify. Do not use the standard BioMedCas application route for this option unless we instructed you to do so for the purpose of documentation gathering.