The many research and teaching activities of the department combine to create a lively, congenial, and interactive group of faculty, students, and postdoctoral fellows who enjoy a stimulating and productive research environment. The biology department is located in modern buildings on the Medford campus of Tufts University. Research equipment and facilities are state of the art for the specialties represented by our faculty. Most of the faculty support their research and that of their students with grants awarded by various federal agencies and private foundations. Tufts is part of the Internet2 consortium and the university's central computer facilities are excellent. The department has high speed network access throughout the buildings and dedicated computers, scanners, and printers for graduate student use. A comfortable departmental reading room contains current issues of major biological journals while the main library building holds back issues. Additionally, Tufts' Health Sciences Library and the libraries of many other Boston area universities and teaching hospitals are accessible to our graduate students.

The department holds regular seminars presented by invited scientists to keep students and faculty abreast of exciting research going on elsewhere. Students may take advantage of similar seminars at the many research institutions in the Boston area, for which notices are posted regularly. In addition to invited speakers, each of the departmental faculty and postdoctoral fellows presents an annual research seminar.

Beginning in their second year, graduate students present an annual research seminar to update their research progress and to gain experience in formal presentation of their work.

The Boston area is noted for its rich intellectual life, and especially for the high concentration of universities, colleges, medical schools, teaching hospitals, research institutions, and other scientific and technological enterprises. Students have nearly unlimited opportunities to tap into these diverse resources as they pursue programs of study in biology. The Tufts University collaborative community alone includes separate schools of biomedical sciences, nutrition, medicine, veterinary medicine, and dental medicine. Other Tufts resources include the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy. Graduate students in biology may take courses for credit at any of these Tufts divisions and also at other universities in our graduate school consortium (Boston College, Brandeis University, Boston University).