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Delivering ELIXIR-UK

ReferenceBB/L005026/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor Dr Catherine Brooksbank
Co-Investigators /
Co-Supervisors		 Professor Christine Orengo
Institution EMBL - European Bioinformatics Institute
DepartmentOutreach and Training
Funding typeResearch
Value (£) 30,857
StatusCompleted
TypeResearch Grant
Start date 01/01/2014
End date 31/12/2014
Duration12 months

Abstract

The Node's training mission will be delivered in four ways: (a) The organisation of training through ten cooperating Training Sectors where UK skills are strong, training needs have been identified, and training capabilities already exist. Each sector is led by established researchers in their fields, and many co-operations between the Sector Leads already exist. Each Sector Lead is responsible for: (i) representing the sector at initial Training the Trainers (TTT) events; (ii) organisation of an initial workshop that performs a training gap analysis for the sector, and (iii) fund-raising for resources that aim to plug these training gaps. (b) These training gaps will also be filled by trainers' skills being developed by workshops that exchange ideas and best practice among sectors. ELIXIR-UK will be particularly supportive of training delivered at the interface between different sectors. Existing training resources will be collated and new training materials developed and disseminated at every opportunity. (c) The development of a pilot Training e-Support Service platform that will seek, among other things, to offer the crucial means of registering and discovering training materials, face-to-face training opportunities and training-relevant resources, and will progressively deliver forms of training online. A feasibility study will be undertaken on whether pipelines could be developed to permit ELIXIR trainers to disseminate their own training content on-line, whilst maintaining a separate copy in their home training institution. (d) Development, management and monitoring of outcomes of the training activities through three posts who (i) support the Training Sector Leads, (ii) coordinate the redefinition of of training agendas with UK scientists, industry, grant-giving bodies and other ELIXIR Nodes, and (iii) will foster, mentor and support the community of trainings, across all sectors, in the UK and Europe.

Summary

ELIXIR is a project that is designed to construct and operate a sustainable infrastructure for biological information in Europe. Owing to the dearth of individuals who can take advantage of large biological data sets, we have decided to focus the UK's ELIXIR node on training. This is the century of biology, and genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics ('omics and bioinformatics) lie at its heart. The computer is an essential tool and now drives many critical aspects of the scientific process hence scientists need to know how to gain most advantage from it. Despite the central role of computing in science today: - Most research scientists are ill-equipped to take advantage of the data 'bonanza' that is emanating from new technologies. Critical training needs across the community are, broadly, in the analysis and the interpretation of genome-scale data of many types, including next generation sequencing (NGS) data. Genomics is the area of greatest training need as it lies at the intersection of many fast-moving research disciplines. - Many infrastructure technologists (career bioinformaticians) are ill-equipped to offer scalable, sustainable solutions for managing and interpreting data arising from this flood of technological advances. Critical training needs are in techniques and practices for data management, integration, compute and software, tools, services and standards. The ELIXIR-UK Core Organisations are: the Universities of Oxford, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Edinburgh; the NERC Environmental Omics Synthesis Centre; the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute; the Genome Analysis Centre; and, University College London. Additional participating organisations are: the Software Sustainability Institute UK; the Hartree Centre; and the University of Dundee. Other organisations (UK and ELIXIR-wide) will be incorporated to provision training.

Impact Summary

ELIXIR-UK will provide a sustained focus on training that will enable users of ELIXIR's services to exploit them to the full. It will address the low capability and capacity prevalent in the UK and among ELIXIR member states in analysing and interpreting large data-sets. The Node will consider the training needs for diverse domains, for example from many types of organisms and different industries. Training will be delivered through a mixture of training modalities from face-to-face training to online courses and resources. The long-term vision for ELIXIR-UK is set out in the ELIXIR Node Application Form - (UK) submitted to the ELIXIR SAB in 2012 and recently accepted. The Node's focus is on training, and thus on developing relevant skills, as opposed to teaching. Its mission is to facilitate training of research scientists and infrastructure technologists (e.g. career bioinformaticians and researcher-developers) in bioinformatics, computing, statistics and biology, in partnership with UK centres, industry and other ELIXIR Nodes. We have a strong focus on building a community of subject-matter experts who also excel at training, on making reusable training materials available to this community, and on training trainers to make use of these. This focus creates a multiplier effect that will enable us to have much stronger impact than if we simply focused on delivering training to end-users. Exploiting structural data to interpret the impact of genetic variations will inform clinical diagnostics, development of personalised medicines, plant and livestock breeding and pesticide resistance. This ELIXIR-UK activity will capitalise on the wealth of UK expertise in structural bioinformatics to make existing training materials and opportunities openly available to the research community, and to support ELIXIR's training community to use them effectively. It will combine this with existing expertise in elearning to provide a coherent, stand-alone set of re-usable training materials that will provide test materials for the ELIXIR-UK Training e-support service (TeSS). It will build bridges between the structural bioinformatics and the genomics communities, and will enable ELIXIR-UK to plug training gaps both in industry and in the healthcare service.
Committee Not funded via Committee
Research TopicsX – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research PriorityX – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative European Life Science Infrastructure for Biological Information (ELIXIR) [2013]
Funding SchemeX – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme
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