Intro to Bioinformatics

Our Focus

What makes this course unique?

About the Course

What you can expct to learn

We teach everything necessary to do your sequencing analysis

We start our course by talking about various sequencing platforms and go into detail about experiment design and sequencing technology selection.

In the CS module we introduce students to Linux and the Shell. Students learn about servers and job submission. We talk about sequencing data access and quality control. Students learn programming in R and basic scripting in Linux

Statistics module covers Significance testing (p-value), normalization methods and data distributions. We will discuss in detail about various normalization methods and their applicability for different types of data.

Bioinformatics module is the essence of this course. Having learnt basic computer science and statistics skills we will learn about open source tools (including R packages available in "BioConductor") that help us with specific analyses like ChIP/RNA-seq, Variant/SNP calling and Graphics.

Sequencing Techniques
Platforms, Merits of one vs. another, Sequencing background
Computer Science
Linux, Programming in R, Functions, Variables, Data Structures, File Systems, Scripting, Parallel Job Submission, FTP etc.
statistics
P-Value, Normalization techniques, Data distributions in the NGS context, Statistical Power
Bioinformatics
Read Alignment algorithms, Bioconductor packages in R, ChIP/RNA-Seq, Variant / SNP Calling, Genome Browsers, Graphics / Heatmaps, GSEA & Pathway Analysis

OUR TEAM

We've put together the best team to deliver the best instruction

Martin Aryee, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Associate Member, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT

Martin received his PhD in Biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2008, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Feedback from students

This is the best bioinformatics introduction course that I have ever taken. Vishal is a fantastic instructor. He is extremely patient with each student and willing to spend a lot of his personal time on answering their questions (including nights and weekends). His classes are fun and interactive. Vishal has a good knowledge of his teaching material. His course covers a variety of topics from the very basic Unix skill to the latest sequencing analysis tools in the bioinformatics field. He selected the most useful/reliable analysis tools, and designed individual lectures to explain their concepts and functions. Then, he arranged practical sections in the same week to ensure that students learned how to use those analysis tools. Instead of asking students to simply copy or memorize his template codes, Vishal encouraged them to develop their own skills to write scripts and trouble-shoot bugs. That is very inspiring! I truly enjoy the learning experience in Vishal’s classes.

Spring 2016 Course Participant

PHD, Post Doctoral Student