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The University of Calgary Biostatistics Centre

Program Details

Admission Requirements

In addition to the home program requirements, all applicants must meet the following requirements:

In the case of the MSc Biostatistics Specialization, a bachelor's degree in statistics, or its equivalent, is usually required.

In the case of the PhD Biostatistics Specialization, a master's degree in statistics, or its equivalent, is usually required.

Students must also have letter from a faculty member in the home program indicating an agreement to supervise the applicant. Students are strongly encouraged to approach potential supervisors in advance of applying for entry into the home program and Biostatistics specialization.

List of Supervisors Application Procedure

Program/Course Requirements

MSc (thesis-based) Requirements

Course Requirements:

MDCH 600: Introduction to Community Health Sciences (3 units) 
MDCH 640: Fundamentals of Epidemiology (3 units)
STAT 721: Statistical Inference (3 units)
Electives: A minimum of 9 units (3 HCEs) from List A or B, with at least 3 units from each of A and B 
BIST 600: Research Seminar course (1.5 units).

PhD Requirements

Required courses:

  • MDCH 600 (Fall Block Week): Introduction to Community Health Sciences (3 units) 
  • MDCH 640: Fundamentals of Epidemiology (3 units)
  • STAT 721: Statistical Inference (3 units)
  • STAT 641 Statistical Learning (3 units)  or STAT 631 Computational Statistics (3 units)

Electives: A minimum of 9 units (3 HCEs) from List A or B, with at least 3 units from each of A and B
BIST 600: Research Seminar course (1.5 units).   

N.B. PhD required courses (or equivalents) are based on courses taken across graduate studies; i.e., if the student has taken equivalent courses in an MSc program, they are not required to retake these courses. However, the elective requirements cannot be waived.

List A: Epidemiology and Health

  • MDCH 641: Introduction to Clinical Trials 
  • MDCH 643: Research in Healthcare Epidemiology and Infection Control
  • MDCH 644: Surveillance I: Data Handling for Infection Control 
  • MDCH 647: Clinical Epidemiology 
  • MDCH 649: Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases 
  • MDCH 661: Health Economics I 
  • MDCH 662: Economic Evaluation
  • MDCH 663: Decision Analysis in Health Economics 
  • MDCH 664: Administrative Data Analysis Methodology 
  • MDCH 681: Health Research Methods 
  • MDCH 740: Advanced Epidemiology
  • MDCH 741: Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis 

Relevant topics courses and directed study courses may be approved by the graduate program director in consultation with the supervisor

List B: Biostatistics / Statistics

  • MDCH 611: Models for Health Outcomes (Biostatistics II)
  • MDCH 612: Models for Repeated Measures Studies and Time-to-Event Studies (Biostatistics III)            
  • STAT 619: Bayesian Statistics 
  • STAT 625: Multivariate Analysis 
  • STAT 633: Survival Analysis 
  • STAT 635: Generalized Linear Models
  • STAT 637: Non-linear regression
  • STAT 631: Computational Statistics
  • STAT 641: Statistical Learning
  • STAT 701: Theory of Probability I
  • STAT 723: Theory of Hypothesis Testing

Relevant topics courses and directed study courses may be approved by the graduate program director in consultation with the supervisor.

Students in the Community Health Sciences program must also attend all CHS departmental seminars.

For more information about the Interdisciplinary Biostatistics graduate specializations, please contact the Program Coordinator, Prof. Rob Deardon (rob.deardon@ucalgary.ca).