The goal of the program is to provide training in computational methods development in genomics and related areas to researchers at the graduate student or postdoctoral level as well as provide exposure of the participants to faculty from multiple institutions with the goal of providing opportunities for career transitions (graduate student to postdoc and postdoc to faculty). While there are plenty of short courses that provide training in how to use computational methods to analyze data, very few exist to provide training on how to develop such methods and our program will fill this need. With more and more types of data becoming available in large quantities, the ability to develop new and adapt existing methods in innovative ways is a critical skill for a successful researcher. Our program is useful for those trainee researchers whose career focus is computational methods development, but will also be useful for those researchers who want to add a methods development component to their research program. Our program will consist of a one month summer program at the University of California, Los Angeles integrated with a year round mentoring program building upon relationships that are established during the one month program. An outreach program is integrated into the program.
The development of high-throughput genomic technology has transformed biomedical sciences and provides limitless potential for developing new treatments for disease. However, analyzing the data generated by these technologies requires tremendous computational resources and significant computational expertise by the researchers. The education program described in this proposal is a program designed to train the next generation of biomedical researchers and provide them mentoring to support their careers in biomedical research.
