Can we make biology courses interesting using biologically-inspired computing?

YES! I definitely think you can! In fact, I took courses with John Holland ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Holland ) and Mark Newman (noted Complex Networks theorist) during my undergrad days at the University of Michigan and they had a lot of these elements. Complex Systems and Complex Adaptive Systems studies in general I think are a great way to fuse things like biologically-inspired computing with computer science: Graph Theory and Complex Networks, with studies of predator-prey networks and ecological networks DNA substring/subsequence matching Neural Networks - A great crossover point for AI/ML and neuroscience The genetic algorithm. Inspired by evolution, so it's an obvious crossover point between the fields (pun very much intended). Motion of insects, like ants and bees, using simulations and models (See: SimAnt) Conway's Game of Life.

At my institution at least, quite a lot of effort is being put into integrating more applied computing concepts into wider life science course material. Whilst I'm enrolled on a specific bioinformatics degree programme, most of the lectures I attend are with people who are studying other programmes. In a recent lecture we were introduced to the workings of BLAST and scoring matrices in what I thought was a suitably abstracted and easy to follow way. While a number of people, myself included, found it fascinating, the general attitude of the room was not positive. A later unit satisfaction survey revealed that many people found the content of this particular lecturer 'too hard' or 'confusing'. I may be somewhat biased, but I had little knowledge of the subject prior to the lecture and found it relatively straightforward to follow. Unfortunately, inclusion of almost any computing material in a lecture setting tends to elicit a similar response. In this country at least, it seems that alarmingly few biology undergraduates possess any kind interest in computing. I've discussed this topic with my course director and he believes that it is largely the fault of the British secondary education system, which tends stream those with mathematics and computer science interests away from life sciences at quite an early stage. As such, I imagine that the intersection of students with interests in biology and computing is very small. The USA does seem to do a better job of this, and I suspect that American undergraduates would more readily learn computing concepts in a biological context. I think that concepts of biologically inspired computing will have to be introduced in carefully and cleverly abstracted ways so as not to turn off the majority of students. As soon as code gets mentioned, most people stop listening. It's always going to be difficult to make string searching algorithms sexy, but I think that most of the subject areas Vaibhav Mallya mentioned could be taught in a visual and engaging way.

As pointed out below this is not related to bio inspired computing but more to how biology courses can be made engaging for computing and engineering students : This Systems Biology course by Uri Alon (search 'uri alon systems biology' on youtube : --  an expert and a physics PhD who is now an authority on systems biology seems to be of interest to physicists, computer scientists and engineers. I havent seen the full video (or the other videos of this course) myself but it may be relevant to the question because his goal seems to be to present a mathematical/engineering/computing perspective and abstractions of  biological mechanisms.