Modern molecular and genomic approaches have enabled biologists to ask and answer questions that had previously been intractable. These modern approaches yield vast volumes of data, which require the use of computational tools for effective and efficient analysis. Marine microbiologists are increasingly employing such methods to interrogate complex marine microbial communities, which have defied greater understanding by use of other approaches. However, most marine science educational programs are not prepared to offer the computational training needed to utilize the most modern tools. A course in marine bioinformatics will be offered to train today?s marine scientists in these modern computational tools to enhance their ability to gain novel understanding and insights about these marine microbial systems. The US-EU Taskforce on Biotechnology Research recommended that this type of training course be developed to build such capacity. The training course will be held in the summer of 2012 at Jacobs University in Germany. The main aims of the Marine Bioinformatics training course are to bring together young scientists in a forum that will set the groundwork for future overseas collaborations, and to provide a resource for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty to acquire the skills-set necessary for proper experimental design and for analysis of diversity, (meta)genomics, (meta)transcriptomics, (meta)proteomics, (meta)metabolomics, and associated environmental contextual data from the marine environment. The course will train 30 participants, with 15 from each side of the Atlantic. Participants will be recruited from a range of backgrounds such as computer science, bioinformatics, marine microbial ecology, molecular microbiology, environmental science and oceanography. The course will be organized by scientific chairs: Jennifer F. Biddle, School of Marine Science and Policy, University of Delaware, Lewes DE, USA and Frank Oliver Glöckner, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen & Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany. This course will impact early career scientists by providing them broad interdisciplinary training to expand their research skills. Each participant will be required to report on their efforts to disseminate course material after the course ends, and online content will be posted for those unable to attend. The course website can be found at www.microb3.eu/events/workshops/eu-us-training.
In 2012, we held the first EU US Training in Bioinformatics in Bremen, Germany. The course was co-administered by Drs. Frank Oliver Glockner and Jennifer Biddle. We had 30 students, 15 of whom were US students and professors, who met at Jacobs University in Bremen for 2 weeks of intense bioinformatics training. The focus of this training was the application of bioinformatics tools to marine data, and as such we focused on the combination of computational learning, biological understanding and metadata integration in our course. Typically, bioinformatics training may only teach a computational approach, but since our audience were primarily trained as marine scientists, we included the biological basis for things such as homology scoring, and also the evaluation of datasets to interpret ecological structure. Overall the course was a success, and has led to multiple publications. Students reported satisfaction with the course and still report that this course has enriched their academic careers. We continued with the format in the US for a 2013 course and this initial project directly impacted the second course format. We additionally connected the group, students and instructors, using social media, and have watched the cohort blossom into a professional network. Today the course facebook page is still a place for questions to be addressed and for jobs to be posted. The value of a cohort for a field where the methods change daily has been invaluable for long term progression and development. This underscores the importance of face to face instruction and networking in this discipline.
