Biological sciences are to understand the basic principles of living organisms.
One can use biological knowledge to improve our life and solve many challenges we are facing. For instance, more information is available about human genome and biological systems built on the genome. Based on the information, we better understand the processes of aging, human intelligence, and diseases such as cancer and AIDS, to find a way to fight the diseases and enjoy a longer, healthy life. Advances in biological sciences also help develop new materials, medicines, and diagnosis tools including gene chips. Besides the biomedical application, biological sciences also provide solutions for the critical and global problems of food shortage, resource depletion, and pollution. In short, biologists can help make a better tomorrow.

Biology is still expanding as a cutting-edge science and includes a variety of subdisciplines. As more biological processes are revealed in great detail, biologists investigate living organisms at various scales from molecular levels to evolutionary and ecological levels. Subdisciplines of biology can be categorized into two complementary approaches - reductionist approaches like molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, and physiology, and holistic approaches like ecology, environmental biology, evolutionary biology, and taxonomy. Biomedical, agricultural and fisheries sciences can be considered as practical branches of biology.

Now biologists are expected to communicate with other disciplines of natural sciences and even social sciences, because biological sciences help us to save our humanity by telling us how to solve the global problems mentioned above. Biological sciences act as a hub for interdisciplinary research effort. As we are more interested in our wellness, biology emerges as one of the most promising academic disciplines in the era of biotechnology. Greater investment on biological research and education has been common worldwide, and in Korea, biological research received much attention and is expected to create new growth industries.

With the notion of what biologists can do for the rest of the world, we, faculty and staffs in the Department of Biological Sciences at Pusan National University (PNU), are helping our students to play a central role in the era of biotechnology and to serve local communities with their academic knowledge. To make this happen, we describe our educational goals here:

1. We want our students to be knowledgeable about biological sciences and to have professional skills. To accomplish this goal, we will help students to understand the basic principles in biology and to have greater potential to perform independent research using their creativity and scientific thinking.

2. We want our students to be ready for various professional and industrial jobs after graduation. We will teach theoretical and applied aspects of biology and also provide the students with the opportunities of interdisciplinary learning.

3. We want our students to be familiar with sciences other than biology. We will strive to make various science classes easily accessible to students, help them to explore possible application of biological knowledge, and develop interdisciplinary programs.