Bioinformatics is an emerging field that seeks to apply the tools andtechniques of computer science to the management and analysis of biologicaldata. Because of the explosive growth in this field and related careersover the last decade, many undergraduate institutions have recognized theneed for incorporating bioinformatics into the undergraduate curriculum.Getting started on this task is difficult because of the requirement ofinterdisciplinary cooperation among computer scientists, biologists,chemists and other scientists.

In this talk we will give an introduction to bioinformatics from ourperspectives as a computer scientist and a microbiologist. We will describean introductory course in bioinformatics that we have developed for computerscience and biology students. Finally, we will discuss an interdisciplinaryresearch project that we are conducting with undergraduate students at HopeCollege.