EU-US Training 2013: Background

Rationale and Participants

There is a pressing need to translate our considerable progress in the development and application of tools for interrogating marine sequence, environmental and “Omic’s” data into real world application through the many groups now applying these technologies to marine microbial ecology.

Therefore the main aims of the Marine Bioinformatic "Marine Omics" training course are:

1. to bring together young scientists in a forum that will set the groundwork for future overseas collaborative interactions.
2. to provide a resource for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty to acquire the skill set necessary for proper experimental design as well as analyzing diversity, (meta)genomics, (meta)transcriptomics and associated environmental contextual data from the marine environment.

The course will involve a maximum of 30 participants, with 15 from each side of the Atlantic. Participants will be recruited from a range  of backgrounds like computer science, bioinformatics, marine microbial ecology, molecular microbiology, environmental science and oceanography.

The course is a follow up of the recommendations of the EU US task force on Biotechnology Research. For more information and background please have a look at the 2010 report (PDF, 2.0 Mb).

Course Outline

The course will cover multiple topics in Marine Bioinformatics and will be virtually split into a generic part introducing advanced bioinformatic competences and a specialized part where major data analysis portals will will be introduced and explained.

Each training session will be split into a theoretical part consisting of morning lectures (60-90 minutes) followed by a demonstration and hands-on part where the participants learn how to deal with the tools and interpret the results.

A poster session with flash talks (2 minutes) will be held on the first day where students will be required to briefly introduce themselves and their interests as well as a poster on their own research to promote discussion and interaction.

A distinguished scientist will give a seminar each day, covering a research area related to the topics of the course. This scientist will spend the evening and the next morning with the students to promote interaction and discussions.

For the hands-on sessions students will be placed in small work groups (2-3 people), taking care to obtain a mixture of backgrounds in each group. Participants are requested to bring their own Laptops with the ability to install programs for the course. If you are unable to, please note this on your application.

Location

The course will be held in the Delaware Biotechnology Institute in Newark. The Delaware Biotechnology Institute is a partnership among government, academia and industry to help establish the First State as a center of excellence in biotechnology and the life sciences. The Institute mission is to facilitate a biotechnology network of people and facilities to enhance existing academic and private-sector research, catalyze unique cross-disciplinary research and education initiatives, and to foster the entrepreneurship that creates high-quality jobs.