Last Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to be invited as a guest lecturer to the 3rd BioDataScience101 workshop, an initiative spearheaded by Paolo Marcatili, Professor of Bioinformatics at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). This session, on amino acid sequence analysis applied to both proteomics and antibody drug discovery, was designed and organised by OPIG’s very own Tobias Olsen.

The courses are free and designed to introduce academic and industrial researchers alike to the world of python-based bioinformatics and biological big data analysis approaches. Tuition is guided via Jupyter Notebooks (you’re taught how to use these too), starting with a 3-4 hour practise case study that you can run through in your own time prior to the event. This is followed by a morning session on the day of the workshop, in which you will apply your newfound knowledge to a different scenario/dataset. After lunch, two guest lecturers discuss the role of these bioinformatic techniques in their own research, who then stay online for an interactive discussion session based around the Jupyter Notebook case studies. In particular, particants are encouraged to share their experiences (positive and negative!) in using the tools, and to offer tips and highlight potential pitfalls.

This is a wonderful initiative for anyone wanting to learn or recap key bioinformatics tools/approaches. I thoroughly recommend signing up for the next workshop, which should take place early in the New Year. Thanks to Paolo and Tobias for inviting me to take part, it was great fun!