This award provides support for a three year renewal of the BBSI: Southern California Bioinformatics Summer Institute (SoCalBSI), at California State University at Los Angeles (CSULA), under the direction of Dr. Jamil A. Momand. The Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Biological Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at CSULA, and the Los Angeles/Orange County Biotechnology Center at Pasadena City College will host a ten week summer program for a total of 45 undergraduate and graduate students, 15 per year, for a total of three years. The students will have backgrounds in molecular life science and computer programming.
The objective of the SoCalBSI is to identify and prepare college students for a successful career in the bioinformatics field. The intellectual focus of the institute is on sequence comparison, microarrays analysis and research. The SoCalBSI will consist of three phases presented to students during the summer program: a didactic phase, a professional development phase, and a research phase.
The broader impact of the SoCalBSI on the students is to provide the necessary background that will encourage students to become bioinformaticians or to use bioinformatics in their carreers. The SoCalBSI is unique in that it provides valuable connections between students and researchers at the forefront of the bioinformatics field since it offers a variety of internships from seven different institutions.
This project is being co-funded by the Directorate for Engineering (ENG)/Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) and the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB).
