EEI Coursework Information

Available Courses

The Program of Study for an INF PhD is flexible enough to accommodate specialization in Ecological and Environmental Informatics (“Ecoinformatics” option), Health and Bioinformatics, or Cyber and Software Systems.

EEI students follow the INF Program of Study with an emphasis in Ecoinformatics. Students with a master’s degree can transfer up to 20 graduate credits with approval of their faculty mentor and the SICCS Associate Director of Graduate Studies and Research.

Special Coursework

Three courses were developed specifically for the EEI emphasis area which EEI students are strongly encouraged to take. These include:

Advanced Survey In Ecoinformatics Tools

In this course, students are introduced to a number of online environmental data repositories and given the tools to use these data to answer meaningful ecological and environmental science questions. The course covers data infrastructures like the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), the U.S. Geologic Survey’s Water Information System (NWIS), NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS), and many more.

The course textbook is freely available online, including over a dozen guest lectures from experts at each of these data infrastructures and hands-on tutorials with example code in R. You can access the textbook right now using this link.

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Team-based Interdisciplinary Research

One of the core ideals of the EEI emphasis area is to provide students with the skills to work as part of diverse scientific teams. EEI students are encouraged to take Team-based Interdisciplinary Research as part of their professional development core requirement, in which they learn and implement skills necessary to work successfully as part of a diverse, interdisciplinary scientific team. The course includes guest lectures from experts in areas relevant to the science of team science, as well as the opportunity to team up with classmates to generate research proposals that integrate the skills and knowledge of all team members.

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Ecoinformatics Seminar

The Ecoinformatics Seminar is a weekly seminar series that includes research talks from a diverse array of experts in ecology, environmental science, informatics, and other related fields. In addition to research talks, the seminar series includes workshops aimed toward honing key “hard” and “soft” professional skills, as well as job panels with scientists from academia, government, and the private sector. For a schedule of past and upcoming seminars, go here.

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INF PhD Program of Study – EEI Emphasis

The following provides information about NAU courses that fulfill each section of the INF Program of Study:

I. Statistics and Computing Core (15 credits)

INF 502 Software Development and Methodologies

INF 511 Modern Regression I

At least 1 additional graduate-level statistical methods course

At least 1 additional graduate-level computing intensive course

At least 1 additional graduate-level computing or statistical methods course

Professional Development Core (6 credits)

1 of:

- - Professional Communication for Informatics and Computing
  - Team-based Interdisciplinary Research

1 of:

- - Professional Communication for Informatics and Computing
  - Team-based Interdisciplinary Research
  - Writing Scientific Papers
  - Interdisciplinary Research Rotation