The subprogramme educates experts that can turn biological questions into appropriate computational data analysis challenges.  Students of this subprogramme get a view of current hot-topics in molecular biology and learn general principles and methods for formulating and solving computational problems. In addition to the core methodological studies in algorithms and machine learning, particularly for biological data, students are encouraged to get experience and take courses in molecular biology and related areas.

The subprogramme operates in an umbrella manner, combining courses offered by several departments and universities. Namely, the compulsory courses are the same as in the subprogramme of Algorithms, Data-analytics and Machine Learning and advanced studies in bioinformatics are collected from the internal offerings of the subprogramme, as well as from the offerings of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Helsinki) and the Department of Information and Computer Science at the Aalto University. The subprogramme together with its counterparts (namely, biometry and bioinformatics, biomathematics, and life science technologies) in the collaborating departments replaces gradually the MBI programme, that has acted in the similar umbrella manner since 2006: MBI still works in parallel to these subprogrammes but organizes no longer student admissions.