The following workshops will take place this year in Toronto, ON, Canada:

Bioinformatics for Cancer Genomics
DATES: May 28 - June 1, 2012
URL: http://bioinformatics.ca/workshops/cancer-genomics
Lead Faculty (2012): John McPherson, Francis Ouellette, Paul Boutros, Malachi Griffith, Sohrab Shah, Gary Bader and Anna Lapuk
Registration fee before April 27, 2012: $950 + HST; after April 27, 2012: $1150 + HST

OBJECTIVES: Cancer research has rapidly embraced high throughput technologies into its research, using various microarray, tissue array, and next generation sequencing platforms. The result has been a rapid increase in cancer data output and data types. Now more than ever, having the informatic skills and knowledge of available bioinformatic resources specific to cancer is critical.

Informatics and Statistics for Metabolomics
DATES: May 3-4, 2012
URL: http://bioinformatics.ca/workshops/metabolomics-workshop
Lead Faculty (2012): David Wishart
Registration fee before April 2, 2012: $500 + HST; after April 2, 2012: $700 + HST

OBJECTIVES: The workshop will cover many topics ranging from understanding metabolomics technologies, data collection and analysis, using pathway databases, performing pathway analysis, conducting univariate and multivariate statistics, working with metabolomic databases and exploring chemical databases. Participants will be given various data sets and short assignments to assist with the learning process.

Informatics on High Throughput Sequencing Data
DATES: June 11-12, 2012
URL: http://bioinformatics.ca/workshops/high_throughput
Lead Faculty (2012): Michael Brudno, Michael Stromberg, Malachi Griffith, Marc Fiume & Francis Ouellette
Registration fee before May 11, 2012: $500 + HST; after May 11, 2012: $700 + HST

OBJECTIVES: With the introduction of high-throughput sequencing platforms from Illumina, Roche and ABI, it is becoming feasible to consider sequencing approaches to address many research projects. However, knowing how to manage and interpret the large volume of sequence data resulting from such technologies is less clear. The CBW has developed a 2-day course covering the bioinformatics tools available for managing and interpreting high-throughput sequencing data.

Microarray Data Analysis
DATES: June 4-5, 2012
URL: http://bioinformatics.ca/workshops/microarray-workshop
Lead Faculty (2012): Paul Boutros
Registration fee before May 4, 2012: $500 + HST; after May 4, 2012: $700 + HST

OBJECTIVES: The goal of this workshop is to provide procedures and analysis workflows for the analysis of microarray datasets. Discussions will include data-organization practices, data-annotation, normalization, pre-processing, and (briefly) downstream analysis. This workshop provides an ideal entry to the "Pathway and Network Analysis of --omics Data " workshop.

Pathway and Network Analysis of -omics Data
DATES: June 7-8, 2012
URL: http://bioinformatics.ca/workshops/beyond
Lead Faculty (2012): Gary Bader, Quaid Morris & Lincoln Stein
Registration fee before May 7, 2012: $500 + HST; after May 7, 2012: $700 + HST

OBJECTIVES: Many research programs often slow or stall after generating a gene list. The CBW has developed a 2-day course covering the bioinformatics concepts and tools available for annotating and determining functional enrichment of a gene list and analyzing networks. The workshop is focused on the principles and concepts required for analyzing and conducting pathway analysis on a gene list from any organism, although focus will be on human and model Eukaryotic organisms. Specifically, we will focus on 1) getting more information about a gene list, 2) finding out how a set of genes is connected, 3) discovering what's enriched in a gene list (and using it for hypothesis generation) and 4) extending or refining a gene list. An analysis flow chart will be developed throughout the course.

Exploratory Data Analysis and Essential Statistics using R
DATES: September 6-7, 2012
URL: http://bioinformatics.ca/workshops/statistics
Lead Faculty (2012): Boris Steipe
Registration fee before August 3, 2012: $500 + HST; after August 3, 2012: $700 + HST

OBJECTIVES: Before we can begin to apply rigorous statistical tools to research data, we often need to approach our data intuitively, and look for meaningful associations, surprising patterns, or irregularities, to formulate hypotheses. This is commonly referred to as Exploratory Data Analysis--EDA. This workshop introduces the essential tools and strategies that are available through the free statistical workbench R. Participants should be able to modify the scripts and protocols we discuss for their research tasks, identify potential problems with their own data, and define their statistics needs for cases in which expert advice is required. Case studies with common research scenarios such as microarray data, and flow cytometry will emphasize practical skills. Writing your own R functions and analysis scripts will be introduced at the beginning of the workshop and skills will be gradually built on over the course of the lectures. Plotting and visualization is a key element of EDA and we will gradually build skills--from the elementary built-in routines via their (sometimes bewildering) array of parameters to sophisticated, publication-ready presentations.

Awards available for 2012.