The Cyberinfrastructure (CI) group at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (www.vbi.vt.edu/) will lead an effort to develop and implement a multidisciplinary bioinformatics course for the students of Bluefield State College in Bluefield, West Virginia, and Galileo Magnet High School in Danville, Virginia in partnership with the faculty of the respective institutions. Underrepresented groups in education and economically disadvantaged areas have been woven into the proposed participant list.
The main objectives of the proposed activities are to: - orient current and future generations of scientists, engineers, and educators to the principles of CI in their teaching, training, and learning; - broaden the participation of groups currently underrepresented in the science and engineering enterprise; and - prepare a diverse CI-savvy science and engineering workforce.
One of the proposed projects will be based on a biodefense scenario requiring an emergency response to a pathogen outbreak projected to take place some time in the future. In this project, students draw from the six knowledge domains to develop and implement strategies, in a team-oriented approach, to generate, analyze, interpret high-throughput genomics data and communicate the results. The students will work with experts in the area of biodefense to develop control measures. A detailed course material will be developed during the first year to be implemented during the second year. The assessment of the project is done by the CI group, the experts involved, the faculty and the using both quantitative and qualitative research strategies. The results will be published with critical assessment on: (1) the content of the CI demo course, (2) the effectiveness of dissemination of the CI principles, and (3) the reproducibility and scalability of the course to a broader and diverse community.
The intellectual merit of the project is deployment of a stimulating real-life problem oriented project where the focus will be on practical application of CI principles without the burden of detailed study of the principles and theories involved. The main impact of the project will be progressing towards development of a knowledgebase through the integration and interoperability among exponentially increasing databases and data types. By nature of the selection of the target group, this will impact the minority, underrepresented and underprivileged community. The project will be implemented in a replicable fashion, within an environment that demonstrates the power of utilizing high-throughput technologies, in combination with integrated software systems, and combining data and analysis tools distributed across a network/grid.
