Certificate Workshop Funded!

The Bioinformatics Graduate Certificate Program was selected for funding by the recent call for interdisciplinary program planning proposals by the OSU Provosts Office, and by additional funding from the Office of Academic Affairs.
Our proposal focuses on immediate training through lectures, followed by the development and implementation of a Bioinformatics Workshop by Summer 2012.

Whether you come from a life-science background or not, we will teach you how to succeed in the Certificate Program!        You can be a Bioinformatician!
To give interested parties the knowledge they need to take graduate courses in a new discipline, we are offering open seminars given by OSU Faculty.  These are “basics” lectures... essentially TUTORIALS for participants (students, faculty, independents) who would like to participate in the Workshop this coming Summer. The tutorials will cover background topics from the different disciplines and give guidance about where additional information can be accessed for self-paced cross-discipline learning.  PLEASE WATCH for these announcements.

We also have started a Seminar Series bringing world-class speakers to describe how they have combined disciplines and used bioinformatics in their research. Check for dates on our Calendar.

Speakers include Dr. John Quackenbush (Biostatistics, Harvard),  Dr. Harold "Skip" Garner (director of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute) will give TWO seminars, including one on the Ethics of Publishing,  Dr. Patrick Schloss ("Mothur" software, U. Michigan), and Dr. Henry Neeman (Data management in a new era, U. of Oklahoma) have already agreed to participate.

Keep checking our calendar here, or on FACEBOOK, and join up as an OSU bioinformatics user on the Oklahoma State Bioinfo-Certificate FACEBOOK page.

Several other program planning grants with a bioinformatics involvement were also funded. These programs will compliment the efforts of the Certificate Program and we are coordinating efforts with the top two listed below to create a cohesive path towards integrated understanding between diverse disciplines.

• Entangled Genomes: An Interdisciplinary Program in the Ecology and Evolution of Genomic Interactions, Mark Fishbein, botany;
• iCREST: Interdisciplinary Center for Research Excellence in Science and Technology (Bioinformatics and Computational Biology), Rakesh Kaundal, biochemistry and molecular biology;
• Interdisciplinary Program in Toxicology, Carey Pope, physiological sciences;
• Bridging the 21st Century: Transforming Life Science Instruction through Collaborative, Interdisciplinary Research, Don French, zoology;
• Molecular and Cellular Biophysics, Rob Burnap, microbiology and molecular genetics;
• Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Initiative – a Joint Program between OSU-Center for Health Sciences, Tulsa, OSU-Stillwater, and OSU-Tulsa,  David Wallace, pharmacology and forensic sciences;