ADVANCED BIOINFORMATICS 2005-2009 The goal of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Course in Advanced Bioinformatics is to provide biologists with the knowledge and tools they need to deal with the genomic information explosion. Complementary to training in end-user tools such as BLAST, this course teaches researchers how to take charge of their data, manage it and manipulate it by creating scripts, databases and other software systems. Designed for students and researchers with basic knowledge of procedural programming, this 14 day course will teach object-oriented Perl scripting and its use in the design, construction and management of complex analysis pipelines. The course combines formal lectures with hands-on laboratories in which students solve a series of problem sets drawn from common scenarios in biological data acquisition, integration, and laboratory management. Students are also encouraged to pose problems using their own data and to work together with faculty to solve them. ? ?