Assisting Bioinformatics Efforts at Minority Schools

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This proposal is to continue our highly successful program of assisting minority institutions in building multidisciplinary bioinformatics training programs. We will do this in a four part program. First is an intensive two- week long Summer Institute in bioinformatics at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) for faculty and staff; which emphasizes sequence-based bioinformatics, but includes coverage of proteomics, genomics and other aspects of computational biology. Second, PSC staff will travel to the selected minority institutions to present overviews of bioinformatics, present research seminars, discuss open research problems in bioinformatics with interested faculty members, and assist local faculty in team-teaching a bioinformatics course. Third is an internship program with students from minority institutions coming to the PSC for five weeks of intensive research experience. Fourth, we are expanding our original program to include a curriculum development effort to provide a set of courses to support bioinformatics efforts; which would typically involve students from the biological sciences, computer science, and mathematics departments. Though general, the curriculum is primarily designed to support a certificate program in bioinformatics. There are three specialty areas in bioinformatics: biology-specialty (e.g., biology, genetics), computational-specialty (e.g., CS, IS),and modeling specialty (e.g., mathematics, engineering). We envision that there will be two courses per specialty area: one survey course that is taken by students in the other specialty areas, and the two in-depth courses that are taken by students in the specialty. We expect that students entering from each track will retain that background as their primary area of expertise and professional competence but will develop a strong ability to applybioinformatics within their area of expertise (biological sciences) or to apply their area of expertise to developing solutions for problems in bioinformatics (computer and mathematical sciences). These will be designed as modular courses in a modular curriculum that can be adapted by minority serving institutions to meet the particular circumstances, needs and desires of the specific institution.