Summer School in Bioinformatics,24-28 June 2019, UK

This course provides an introduction to the use of bioinformatics in biological research, giving participants guidance for using bioinformatics in their work whilst also providing hands-on training in tools and resources appropriate to their research.

Participants will initially be introduced to bioinformatics theory and practice, including best practices for undertaking bioinformatics analysis, data management and reproducibility. To enable specific exploration of resources in their particular field of interest, participants will be divided into focused groups to work on a small project set by EMBL-EBI resource and research staff, ending in a presentation from each group on the final day of the course.

The course includes training and mentoring provided by experts from EMBL-EBI and external institutes.

A major element of this course is a group project, where participants will be placed in small groups to work together on a challenge set by trainers from EMBL-EBI data resource and research teams.  This allows people to explore the bioinformatics tools and resources available in their area of interest and to apply these to a set problem, providing them with hands-on experience of relevance to their own research. The group work will culminate in a presentation session involving all participants on the final day of the course, giving an opportunity for wider discussion on the benefits and challenges of working with biological data.

Groups are mentored by the trainers who set the initial challenge, but active participation from all group members is expected.  Groups are pre-organised before the course, and all group members will be sent some short “homework” in preparation for their project work prior to the start of the course.

This course is aimed at individuals working across biological sciences who have little or no experience in bioinformatics. Applicants are expected to be at an early stage of using bioinformatics in their research with the need to develop their skills and knowledge further. No previous knowledge of programming / coding is required for this course.

After this course you should be able to:

• Discuss applications of bioinformatics in biological research

• Browse, search, and retrieve biological data from public repositories

• Use appropriate bioinformatics tools to explore biological data

• Comprehend some ways biological data can be stored, organised and interconverted