[Plsfaculty] FW: Building Bioinformatics Capacity

[Orchard, Samantha - (orchard)]

Dear SPLS Faculty,

Please see the information below from Nirav Merchant and consider signing up for a meeting time if you are involved in or have an interest in promoting bioinformatics and (biological) data science in research or instruction.


As you are well aware of the challenges in recruiting and retaining bioinformatics and biological data science talent on our campus. We are trying to develop a sustainable strategy and roadmap that will allow us to align institutional resources, expertise and talent to meet the research needs.



We are bringing in two experts in this area (details below) March 27-28 to help formulate this plan. I would share this with faculty in your department (link to sign up for available time slot is below). Please encourage them share challenges and limitations encountered in hiring trained students and staff, their short term and long-term vision/needs (bioinformatics/biological data science) for their lab/team. If there are other faculty/research groups that could benefit from guiding this activity through their input, please have them sign up for a slot as well.



Input and participation from your department is greatly appreciated. We need to hear multiple points of views and needs from various research groups to make this a more comprehensive solution.



Regards,

Nirav

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Building Bioinformatics capacity at the University of Arizona



Bioinformatics and data science plays a crucial role in biology and biomedical research, the field has seen rapid advance with availability of novel analysis methods and tools. Bioinformaticians are central to clinical and translational research, and the conduit for interdisciplinary collaboration for any project. Due to open-source and data sharing initiatives in translational sciences   along with the need for novel methods for integration of large-scale high-throughput assays, the need for a skilled workforce in biological data science (computational biology, bioinformatics, statistics) are increasing. Multiple UArizona departments and centers have identified the lack of access to trained bioinformaticians and data science personnel as an impediment to their progress. There is a high demand for these skills in industry, academia and governmental agencies with an extremely competitive hiring landscape for the foreseeable future.



The University of Arizona needs to build  the infrastructure and pipeline for internal talent to create a campus community of trained bioinformaticians and biological data scientists. Through the strategic initiatives Aegis and Analytics Powerhouse we have invited two leading experts in the field of bioinformatics and data science training and workforce development, Ben Busby and Jason Williams  (brief bios below) to engage with our campus community and help us create a strategy and roadmap for UArizona. This roadmap will help guide current and future investments to meet the needs for our campus to be research competitive and productive.



Ben and Jason will visit UArizona Tucson and Phoenix campuses (March 27-28, 2023) to kick off the process. We are requesting participation and input from your unit, please select any available slot on their schedule page<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xGJjtHbOorhXgcfD0MF4zAg_Lhy-qaP0V60mPu-OjYI/edit?usp=sharing>. They are available to meet in person (BSRL 100) with individuals and teams or via zoom (details are provided on the schedule). If you need a slot longer than 30 minutes, please feel free to choose multiple slots. If you need assistance or need to be added to a waiting list please contact Rudy Salcido rsalcido06 at arizona.edu<mailto:rsalcido06 at arizona.edu>



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Ben Busby Biography

Ben Busby is a Director and Principal Scientist at DNAnexus, where he develops the scientific strategy for large biobank, multimodal data integration, and machine learning engagements. Ben has also been involved in developing, organizing, and implementing approximately 70 national and international hackathons, codeathons, or challenges in the biomedical space since 2014, involving thousands of graduate students, postdocs, and other researchers. Before DNAnexus, Ben founded the Bioinformatics and Data Science Department at the Foundation for the Advanced Education in the Sciences Graduate School on the NIH campus, growing the department from 1-22 courses per year and supervising several dozen faculty. Ben continues to be actively involved in several biological data science research projects with collaborators across industry, government, and academia; and maintains a formal volunteer collaboration involving variant annotation at Johns Hopkins University. Ben is particularly interested in helping graduate students, postdoctoral and senior researchers in academia, and biologists of all stripes in industry integrate data science into translational research and productively integrating translational researchers into data science research teams. Ben is a guest editor at Frontiers in Bioinformatics, managing the topic "widely applicable biological data science algorithms across the fields of genomics, clinical science, agriculture, and drug design." Ben is originally from Tucson and is particularly looking forward to working with the University of Arizona.



Jason Williams Biography

Jason Williams is Assistant Director, Diversity and Research Readiness at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory DNA Learning Center, where he develops national biology education programs. Jason focuses on developing bioinformatics in undergraduate education and career-spanning learning for biologists. His work includes the study of the barriers to introducing bioinformatics into the undergraduate curriculum (Article Link<https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0224288>) as well as competencies for undergraduate bioinformatics (Article Link<https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0196878>). Jason has led education, outreach, and training for CyVerse, and has trained thousands of students, researchers, and educators in bioinformatics, data science, and molecular biology. Jason founded LifeSciTrainers.org – a global effort to promote a community of practice among professionals who develop short-format training for life scientists (Article Link<https://www.bikeprinciples.org/>). Jason is an advisor to cyber infrastructure, bioinformatics, and education projects and initiatives in the US, UK, Europe, and Australia. He is also a teacher at the Yeshiva University High School for Girls.


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