Grant: Meetings, Planning and Dissemination Grant: Genetics

The Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops (CBW) 2010 Series proposal outlines a series of short two-day workshops in specialized, advanced level topics such as next generation sequencing bioinformatics and dealing with gene lists from omics data sets. Given the current advances in research platforms and technology, such content makes this workshop series extremely relevant and critical for today's molecular biology and genetic research. The proposed workshops include: 1) Interpreting Gene Lists from omics Studies; 2) Informatics on High Throughput Sequencing Data; 3) Exploratory Data Analysis and Essential Statistics in Biology; and 4) Clinical Genomics and Biomarker Discovery. These intense workshops will be taught by prominent Canadian bioinformatics researchers and will be open to all researchers in academia, government and industry requiring such advanced computational biology skills. Class sizes will be limited to 30 students per workshop, ensuring individualized training and skill development opportunity. The CBW is a national training program in computational biology established in 1999. It is now situated in Toronto with its secretariat at the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research (OICR), where the training program remains under the leadership of Francis Ouellette, the Associate Director of Informatics and Biocomputing at the OICR. Since 1999, more than 1,200 workshop seats have been filled by life science researchers and computer scientists from academia, government and industry. The CBW has a proven track record of delivering effective bioinformatics training to the Canadian research community, significantly impacting health research in Canada. The CBW is seeking support from the CIHR, Institute of Genetics for the 2010 workshop series. The CBW is requesting $7,720 which constitutes 5% of the total budget for the proposed series of 4 workshops. Registration fees generate 41% and cash/in-kind contributions of 54% have been secured from external sources.