by Isabela Paredes-Cisneros, Bioinformatics Training Project Manager, EMBL & BioNT
In this article, the BioNT consortium presents its inaugural year’s accomplishments and future plans, including its Community Event hosted by EMBL-Heidelberg.
What is BioNT?
BioNT, the Bio Network for Training, is a consortium project coordinated by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and co-funded by the European Commission. The main project goal is to advance digital skills within the Life Sciences through comprehensive training programs and community engagement, focusing on increasing the employability of trainees across the diverse biotech/biomed sector.
Tapping into BioNT’s expertise: Academic institutions and industry working together
At the heart of BioNT’s mission is the commitment to provide accessible and relevant training opportunities tailored to the needs of novice learners on one side and experienced learners on the other. With a focus on advancing digital literacy, BioNT equips participants with the necessary expertise in Python, RNA-seq, and high-performance computing, as well as best practices for software management, data management, and machine learning, among others. This mission is supported by the expertise of BioNT’s partners from the academic sector and the small and medium enterprise (SME) ecosystem, distributed across Spain, Germany and Norway.
BioNT’s training offers
BioNT’s training offer is divided into a 12-event program in two curricula (4 courses in the basic curriculum, delivered twice, and 4 courses in the advanced curriculum), with offers ranging from introduction to programming and bioinformatics, to system administration and machine learning. The first of BioNT’s workshops for novice learners, “A practical introduction to bioinformatics and RNA-seq using Galaxy” will be delivered again on September 4th-8th, providing the key concepts of sequencing data analysis as well as a broader overview of bioinformatics data analysis.
The feedback provided so far by BioNT learners has been overall really positive, as we summarised in our first-year report: Above 95% of the 100+ learners would be likely to recommend this course to friends and colleagues. BioNT aims to continue empowering individuals with these essential skills, to enhance employability across diverse sectors and drive innovation within the life sciences.
One first year of fruitful collaborations
During the first year of the project, the consortium had the opportunity to collaborate closely with different training entities across Europe, such as ELIXIR (Hub and its different nodes), The Carpentries, CodeRefinery, and Galaxy Training Network, among others. A highlight this year was the crafting and analysing of a training needs survey, together with the ELIXIR Hub and the German node (de.NBI). This survey allowed us to identify the most interesting topics for those learners in Industry and Academia and provided insights about different aspects of the training format preferred by the audience: for example, high interest in Data Analysis and preference for highly interactive online workshops. A summary of the collaboration, the link to the survey and the joint 10 tips for industry training are available in this link.
An invitation to BioNT event: “Community-led training beyond academia”
As part of its ongoing efforts to promote knowledge exchange and collaboration with different communities, BioNT is thrilled to announce its upcoming Community Event. Scheduled from November 12th to 14th, 2024 and hosted at the EMBL in Heidelberg, this event promises to be a gathering of training experts across various sectors to discuss the overarching theme of “Community-led training beyond academia”. A highlight of this event is the industry panel “Coding and Data Science Skills Training for Industry”, which will be digging into the training format and training content that is more relevant for companies in the biomedical and biotechnical sectors. Additionally, the event will count with sessions in the format of workshops, breakout discussions, lightning talks and three international keynotes. You will find further information about the event, the programme and sponsorship opportunities here.
You are warmly invited to connect with BioNT, BioNT training workshops and the upcoming Community Event. Make sure you don’t miss our latest developments, by following BioNT on LinkedIn. For any enquiries, please contact BioNT at contact@biont-training.eu