Minors

The Life Sciences Engineering Master curriculum may be complemented with a Minor offered at EPFL.
Symposium IOOCS17 | © EPFL Alain Herzog

A Minor is a group of compulsory and optional courses from one or more Master’s programs. Students may validate a Specialization or a Minor, but not both. Specializations or Minors will be listed in the Diploma Supplement. Validation of a Minor is optional and requires at least 30 ECTS from the corresponding minor study plan.

SV Study Plan

You do not need to extend your studies to do a Minor. The Minor (30 ECTS) “eats” credits of optional courses (Group 2 “Options”). Specific Minor courses, including a semester project, can be taken instead of optional courses. The total of the Master remains 120 credits.

You have until the end of the first semester (MA1) to choose a Specialization or a Minor and validate the Academic Registration Form (FRAC): http://is-academia.epfl.ch/page-6244-en.html.

You need to indicate your Specialization or Minor when you validate the academic registration form FRAC (before the start of the second semester).

Every course can only be validated once, either in Group 1 “Core courses Engineering and Computation” or in Group 2 “Options”. If you want course(s) from Group 1 to be validated within your Minor, you have to contact the section who will move the course(s) in Group 2.

If you reach 13 credits in Group 1 “Core courses Engineering and Computation”, the additional credit won’t count in the Group 2 “Options”. You may exceed 45 credits in the “Options”. However, once you validated all Groups in the Master cycle (90 ECTS), you will be enrolled into the Master project (30 ECTS).

The SV  interdisciplinary minor in Physics of Living Systems allows students to complement the training received in their main discipline by deepening their knowledge in topics  at the interface between physics and biology.  It is open to students in the field of life sciences engineering or physics, as well as to other engineering curricula. Introductory courses are made available for students lacking previous training in life sciences.

Physics of Living Systems is an emerging field that seeks to apply physics principles to solve complex biological problems at the level of molecules, cells, organisms and populations.

Physics has played a pivotal role  in major discoveries in biology and in the development of new technology in the life sciences and medicine, as exemplified from the double helix structure of DNA to functional brain imaging. It is an inherently broad field employing physical approaches from many subdisciplines of physics, including statistical physics, dynamical systems, mechanics and computation. This minor intersects these disciplines with various biological applications in a selection of courses introducing the student to many different aspects of living systems, including mechanobiology,, structural biology,  biomedical imaging and data modeling

As part of the minor a mandatory 8-credits project is proposed to enable students to apply their knowledge in practice in an EPFL laboratory.

The Disciplinary Minor in SV is available to EPFL students of other disciplines, except Life Sciences Engineering Master students.

Requirements to validate the SV Disciplinary Minor

3-4 ECTS min. from Bloc 1 “Core courses Life Sciences Engineering”

3-4 ECTS min from Group 1 “Core courses Engineering and Computation”

Remaining credits within Group 2 “Options”

Students may take one 8-credit lab immersion within Group 2 optional courses.

For students without any background in life sciences the course BIO-105 Cellular biology and biochemistry for engineers is highly recommended.

Registration form for the Disciplinary Minor in LSE

Coursebook including course descriptions for the Master

EPFL study plan and regulations (scroll to SV)

For additional information, please contact Dr. B. Grisoni. Office: SG 1310.3

From the list of Minors offered, we recommend the following as being particularly relevant: