The mission of BICB is to conduct research and provide education through the establishment of academic and research programs. All BICB academic and research programs are established between the University of Minnesota Rochester (UMR) and University of Minnesota Twin Cities (UMTC) with collaboration from Mayo Clinic, IBM, and The Hormel Institute.

An interdisciplinary, all-University graduate program offering Ph.D., M.S., and Minor degrees in biomedical informatics and computational biology was approved by the U of M Board of Regents in July 2008 and students have been admitted for Fall 2008. In addition, UMR has fostered the creation of collaborative research projects among between UMTC, Mayo Clinic, IBM, and The Hormel Institute research through funding nine collaborative seed grants, fifteen traineeships, and a post-doctoral associate.