Bioinformatics Training on a Global Scale

With technologies underpinning life sciences constantly evolving and extending research boundaries, so the influx of data produced requires researchers, students and professionals alike, to acquire new skills to benefit from the latest developments in bioinformatics. The Genome Analysis Centre’s (TGAC) Manuel Corpas and Vicky Schneider, together with international scientists from the bioinformatics community have been building on a prototype platform for shared resources originally developed by the Bioinformatics Training Network (BTN) and established a new training portal.

The Global Organisation for Bioinformatics Learning, Education and Training (GOBLET) Training Portal encompasses the fields of bioinformatics, biocuration, biocomputing and computational biology, shares a freely available collection of training materials and courses with the life science community, including a catalogue of trainers and course organiser contacts for specific expertise, and training-event announcements.

Manuel Corpas, Project Leader at TGAC, said: “Bioinformatics training needs are rapidly evolving as new technologies and methods are continuously being developed, putting increasing pressure on trainers to be up to date. The GOBLET training portal provides a reliable source of high quality training materials readily available for reuse to the wider areas of Computational Biology. As contents continue to grow, the portal will become ever more useful to the community.”

Vicky Schneider, Head of Scientific Education, Training & Learning (361° Division) at TGAC, said: “It’s fantastic to be part of and see how the GOBLET community has grown and led to the training portal being put into action. I'm looking forward to see how the portal functionalities expand according to the needs of the bioinformatics community.”

Terri Atwood, Chair of GOBLET and Professor of Bioinformatics at the University of Manchester, said “This is an important result for GOBLET, but is just the beginning: working with like-minded individuals and organisations around the world, it marks the first tangible step towards building a sustainable training resource for the benefit of all.”

The scientific paper, titled: “The GOBLET Training Portal: A Global Repository of Bioinformatics Training Materials, Courses and Trainers” is published in Bioinformatics, Oxford Journals