We are pleased to announce the expansion of our educational services with the introduction of on-site and on-line training courses in bioinformatics.

Since 1998, Bioinformatics.Org has been providing free hosting services for bioinformaticists. They've been focused largely on software development projects, but we're now expanding both research and educational services.

Training courses and static tutorials will employ the open-source Moodle course management system to manage student registration and course materials. It's located here:
http://edu.bioinformatics.org

(Note: Account registration will be separate for this system until it can be integrated with the rest of the Bioinformatics.Org website. If you are member of Bioinformatics.Org, you'll need to re-register for this site in order to use it.)

While the on-line course materials will remain gratis, courses lead by an instructor will often require a fee – tiered for academics and economies – to compensate the instructor and to help the Organization.

Our very first course is on-site and targeted toward laboratory researchers who wish to learn how two open-source scripting languages can become powerful tools for data analysis.

OPEN SOURCE BIOINFORMATICS FOR RESEARCHERS

LOCALE: Cambridge, Massachusetts
DATES: Sept. 19 & 20, 2006

DESCRIPTION

This is a course on the fundamentals of open-source programming, to help biologists understand how and when to use the right computer tools for solving computational biology problems, whether sequence analysis, gene expression, mass spectrometry, or systems biology.

This course is modularized so that researchers can understand two distinct tools: a programming and scripting language such as Perl, and a data analysis and visualization language such as R. Armed with knowledge and some hands-on experience with these tools (including add-on modules like BioPerl and Bioconductor), scientists will be able to appreciate and use software better in their organization, and also be able to put research questions in the context of these tools. They will be able to do basic computational tasks themselves and better communicate with their IT group.

For more information on this course:
http://edu.bioinformatics.org/2006a.php