One of the most exciting trends in modern biology involves the use of systematic genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic technologies to construct models of complex biological systems and diseases. These endeavors, collectively known as Systems Biology, establish a paradigm by which to interrogate and iteratively refine our knowledge of the cell. In so doing, systems biology integrates knowledge from diverse biological components and data into models of the system as a whole. Starting in the 2003/2004 academic year, the UCSD Department of Bioengineering has initiated a systems biology syllabus aimed at graduate students and other scientists interested in a career in Systems Biology.

While the field of systems science has existed for some time, systems approaches have recently generated a great deal of excitement in biology due to a host of new experimental technologies that are high-throughput, quantitative, and large-scale. Due to the time and expense associated with large-scale measurements as well as the enormous amounts of data produced, principled strategies will be indispensable for using these data to construct biological models.