To meet the needs of a greater emphasis on Data Science in biotech research, the MDI Biological Lab is offering an NIGMS-supported an updated bioinformatics training course for undergraduate faculty in June 2023. Dr. Kelley Thomas, the Bioinformatics Core Director of the New Hampshire INBRE, is the course director.
The goal of the course is to support training in bioinformatics skills for college and university undergraduate science instructors so that they can effectively integrate bioinformatics into their science curricula, and help their students prepare for the 21st-century workplace. The course focuses on BASH training to enable classes to work in the UNIX environment. Those skills are developed by applying them to some standard bioinformatics workflows like assembling and annotating a genome from NGS data and an example of microbiome analysis using bacterial 16s sequences. There is support for delivering the curriculum that includes access to a dedicated server with bioinformatics software.