SBIR Phase I: Use of a Visual Programming Environment to Promote Bioinformatics Education

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This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project targets the need for a visual programming environment in bioinformatics education. A bioinformatics visual programming tool has never been implemented for classroom use and could potentially revolutionize bioinformatics training at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The work, which will be performed in collaboration with, and under guidance of, science and education faculty, will leverage the existing Visual Integrated Bioinformatics Environment (VIBE) software. Currently, there exists a significant shortage of trained personnel with the necessary skill set to extract knowledge and derive benefits from data generated in life science research experiments. The shortage of bioinformaticists is due in a large part to a lack of formal bioinformatics training programs at universities. The current lack of formal bioinformatics training, training tools, and qualified bioinformaticists creates a significant bottleneck in the discovery process because it impairs the ability to fully exploit the vast amounts of data produced at pharmaceutical and agricultural research companies as well as government and academic laboratories.The software will immediately address the existing shortage of bioinformatics education tools and, as a result, will also address the downstream problem of the dearth of qualified bioinformaticists. This project offers an efficient and elegant approach to provide a partial solution to these significant problems. The primary customers for the software are individual bioinformatics professors and students, as well as entire departments and universities that offer a bioinformatics degree..