All Bioinformatics courses

Many experimental designs end up producing lists of hits, usually based around genes or transcripts. Sometimes these lists are small enough that they can be examined individually, but often it is useful to do a more structured functional analysis to try to automatically determine any interesting biological themes which turn up in the lists.

This course looks at the various software packages, databases and statistical methods which may be of use in performing such an analysis. As well as being a practical guide to performing these types of analysis the course will also look at the types of artefacts and bias which can lead to false conclusions about functionality and will look at the appropriate ways to both run the analysis and present the results for publication.

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
• Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.

Researchers rely on acquiring external data to validate, benchmark and supplement research findings. Funders require researchers to make their datasets accessible for further reuse.

The goal of this workshop is to bring to the fore existing challenges with genomic data access and reuse. We will introduce a number of tools and resources to simplify #dataaccess and #datasharing.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

This 2-days workshop will bring together bioimage analysts, trainers and developers from NEUBIAS, EuroBioImaging and Global BioImaging, as well as ELIXIR’s Bioschemas and TeSS developers, and anyone willing to contribute, to foster new collaborations between ELIXIR and key initiatives from the image analysis community, to:

• Build a collection of curated image analysis training materials. Many materials are currently available online for several topics but no consistent curation has been applied to them to make them easily discoverable. During the workshop we will collate materials and ensure that, for each image analysis workflow, a minimum set of training materials is available, including slides, practical exercises, Docker container, etc.
• Improve materials’ annotations (introducing full BioSchemas compliance) and align them with existing ELIXIR efforts (linking to TeSS). During the workshop, materials will be curated to ensure that they are properly described, according to the existing ELIXIR guidelines, and BioSchemas compliant. Consequently the curation will enable materials, hosted by individual providers, to be discoverable via TeSS.
• Increase the number of Docker/Virtual Machines (VMs) available for easy installation of image analysis training environments. We will focus on: (i) specific pipelines for which containers currently do not exist, (ii) workflows that are of interest to the NEUBIAS/GBI communities and (iii) for which expertise will be available among the workshop participants. This would be incredibly helpful for running future image analysis courses, including the next GBI course planned for October 2018, as it would increase portability of training environments, reducing the burden of lengthy, and often troublesome, software installations.

Generalised linear models are the kind of models we would use if we had to deal with non-continuous response variables. For example, this happens if you have count data or a binary outcome.

This course aims to introduce generalised linear models, using the R software environment. Similar to Core statistics using R this course addresses the practical aspects of using these models, so you can explore real-life issues in the biological sciences. The Generalised linear models using R course builds heavily on the knowledge gained in the core statistics sessions, which means that the Core statistics using R course is a firm prerequisite for joining.

There are several aims to this course:

1. Be able to distinguish between linear models and generalised linear models

2. Analyse binary outcome and count data using R

3. Critically assess model fit

R is an open-source programming language so all of the software we will use in the course is free. We will be using the R Studio interface throughout the course. Most of the code will be focussed around the tidyverse and tidymodels packages, so a basic understanding of the tidyverse syntax is essential.

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• ♿ The training might take place at the Craik-Marshall training room. This is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access. Please put level access requirements in the "Special requirements" section, so we can take that into consideration when allocating the room.
• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
• Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.

This one day workshop aims to give an introduction to Artemis and ACT (Artemis Comparison Tool). Both tools enable the visualization, analysis and comparison of genome data. They are freely available for all operating systems and can be downloaded here. This is a hands-on course with short talks introducing the tools. The course is taught by members of the Pathogen and Parasite Genomic Teams from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Further information is available here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

Have you heard about High Performance Computing, but are not sure what it is or whether it is relevant for your work? Would you like to use a HPC, but are not sure where to start? Are you using your personal computer to run computationally demanding tasks, which take long and slow down your work? Do you need to use software that runs on Linux, but don't have access to a Linux computer? If any of these questions apply to you, then this course might be for you!

Knowing how to work on a High Performance Computing system is an essential skill for applications such as bioinformatics, big-data analysis, image processing, machine learning, parallelising tasks, and other high-throughput applications.

In this course we will cover the basics of High Performance Computing, what it is and how you can use it in practice. This is a hands-on workshop, which should be accessible to researchers from a range of backgrounds and offering several opportunities to practice the skills we learn along the way.

As an optional session for those interested, we will also introduce the (free) HPC facilities available at Cambridge University (the course is not otherwise Cambridge-specific).

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
• Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.

THIS EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED!

The aim of this 5 days course is to develop motivated participants toward becoming independent BioImage Analysts in an imaging facility or research role. Participants will be taught theory and algorithms relating to bioimage analysis using Python as the primary coding language.

Lectures will focus on image analysis theory and applications. Topics to be covered include: Image Analysis and image processing, Python and Jupyter notebooks, Visualisation, Fiji to Python, Segmentation, Omero and Python, Image Registration, Colocalisation, Time-series analysis, Tracking, Machine Learning, and Applied Machine Learning.

The bulk of the practical work will focus on Python and how to code algorithms and handle data using Python. Fiji will be used as a tool to facilitate image analysis. Omero will be described and used for some interactive coding challenges.

Research spotlight talks will demonstrate research of instructors/scientists using taught techniques in the wild.

This event is organized in collaboration with the Image Analysis Focused Interest Group and is sponsored by the Royal Microscopical Society.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

One of the most important tasks of systems biology is to create explanatory and predictive models of complex biological systems. Availability of gene expression data in different conditions has paved the way for reconstructing direct or indirect regulatory connections between various genes and gene products. Most often, we are not interested in single interactions between gene products; instead, we try to reconstruct networks that provide insights into the investigated biological processes or the entire system as a whole.

This webinar will expand upon the concept of Gene Co-expression Networks to elucidate Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA), and introduce the importance of visualising clustered gene expression profiles as single ‘Eigengenes’. It will describe the complete protocol for WGCNA analysis starting from normalised Gene Expression Datasets (Microarrays or RNA-Seq). This will be followed by a discussion on methods of extraction and analysis of consensus modules and Network motifs from Gene Co-Expression Networks and Transcriptional Regulatory Networks.

The webinar will be presented in the form of a lecture and tutorial with screenshots that enable listeners to emulate the protocols in R. Note that this is a webinar and not a coding exercise. Links to further reading and practice will be shared.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

This course will focus on computational methods for analysing cellular images and extracting quantitative data from them. The aim of this course is to familiarise the participants with computational image analysis methodologies, and to provide hands-on training in running quantitative analysis pipelines.

On day 1 we will introduce principles of image processing and analysis, giving an overview of commonly used algorithms through a series of talks and practicals based on Fiji, an extensible open source software package.

On day 2, we will cover time series processing and cell tracking using TrackMate. The afternoon of day two will focus on understanding the basics of deconvolution and colocalisation, using tools in Fiji to look at basic examples of how to apply deconvolution and how to carry out colocalisation analysis in fluorescence microscopy.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

This course will focus on computational methods for analysing cellular images and extracting quantitative data from them. The aim of this course is to familiarise the participants with computational image analysis methodologies, and to provide hands-on training in running quantitative analysis pipelines.

On day 1 we will introduce principles of image processing and analysis, giving an overview of commonly used algorithms through a series of talks and practicals based on Fiji, an extensible open source software package.

On day 2, we will cover time series processing and cell tracking using TrackMate and advanced image segmentation using Ilastik. Additionally, in the afternoon we will run a study design and data clinic (sign up will be required) for participants that wish to discuss their experiments.

On day 3, we will describe the open Icy platform developed at the Institut Pasteur. Icy is a next-generation, user-friendly software offering powerful acquisition, visualisation, annotation and analysis algorithms for 5D bioimaging data, together with unique automation/scripting capabilities (notably via its graphical programming interface) and tight integration with existing software (e.g. ImageJ, Matlab, Micro-Manager).

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

LithoGraphX is a software to visualize, process and analyse 3D images and meshes.

On the first day of this course, we will demonstrate how to use LithoGraphX to visualize, clean and process 2D and 3D images. We will cover: (i) how to extract cell shape from 2D or 3D images by marking the cell wall or membrane, (ii) how to extract key morphological features and (iii) how to use these features to build a cell classifier. The first day is intended for biologists and computer scientists interested in using LithoGraphX.

On the second day, we will see how to write and distribute extensions to LithoGraphX. To this purpose, we will learn more about the internals of LithoGraphX and its API both in C++ and Python. The second day is intended for computer scientists wanting either to write their own algorithm or automate complex protocols.

Participants can choose to register for both days or for individual days, depending on their interest and background knowledge.

The timetable for this event can be found here.

This course is organized in collaboration with Dr Susana Sauret-Gueto from the OpenPlant Lab of the Department of Plant Sciences of the University of Cambridge.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

One of the most important tasks of systems biology is to create explanatory and predictive models of complex biological systems. Availability of gene expression data in different conditions has paved the way for reconstructing direct or indirect regulatory connections between various genes and gene products. Most often, we are not interested in single interactions between gene products; instead, we try to reconstruct networks that provide insights into the investigated biological processes.

This webinar will introduce the importance and applications of Gene Expression Datasets (Microarrays and RNA-Seq), followed by methods of extraction and analysis of Co-Expression Networks and Transcriptional Regulatory Networks from these datasets. The webinar will focus on the pros and cons of Weighted and Unweighted Networks, citing examples to aid decisions about which networks to use and when.

The webinar will be presented in the form of a lecture and tutorial with screenshots that enable listeners to emulate the protocols in R. Note that this is a webinar and not a coding exercise. Links to further reading and practice will be shared.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

The vast majority of data produced fits the criteria of labelled data (with either continuous of categorical labels); the machine learning task of discriminating classes (for categorical outputs) or predicting future values (continuous outputs) will be discussed in detail, focusing both on classical methods – k nearest neighbours, decision tree based methods and support vector machine – and on the importance and discriminative power of features.

The module will provide support in generating models (using R as programming environment), critically assessing the optimisation of hyperparameters and evaluating the usefulness of the model with respect to the initial question. The examples presented throughout stem from biological examples, yet the skills and critical assessment of outputs are transferrable.

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.

DECIPHER is a collaborative data sharing and interpretation platform that enables the secure upload, analysis and subsequent sharing of anonymised phenotype-linked patient variant data in rare genetic disorders.

DECIPHER is a worldwide user community of over 250 clinical genetics centres and research groups from over 40 countries that utilise the built-in tools for aiding the interpretation of variants as well as to discover other patients that share similar phenotype and genomic findings.

DECIPHER facilitates collaboration and exchange of information between a global community of clinical centers and researchers leading thereby accelerating discovery and diagnosis. Access to consented anonymised records is free to all users. User accounts are provided to bona-fide clinicians and lab scientists to enable deposition and sharing of anonymised patient data.

The purpose of this half-day workshop is to acquaint participants with the DECIPHER website and database and introduce the various built-in tools for visualisation and interpretation of phenotype-linked genomic variation in anonymised consented patient data. It is hoped that by the end of this workshop, users will be able to carry out effective searches of data, use the built-in genome browser to visualise variation in context of other pathogenic and reference data sources, find other patients with similar variants and shared phenotypes, and identify most likely causes of phenotypic presentation by gene prioritisation.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

This course is aimed to provide the tools to conduct Bayesian inference in common situations.

We will be contrasting Bayesian Inference with classical hypothesis testing, covering conjugate distributions and credible intervals. We will also look at modern computational methods such as MCMC approaches using the BUGS library.

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.

PLEASE NOTE The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching as many courses live online, with tutors available to help you work through the course material on a personal copy of the course environment. We aim to simulate the classroom experience as closely as possible, with opportunities for one-to-one discussion with tutors and a focus on interactivity throughout.

This short (0.5 day) intensive course serves to introduce you to the command-line interface in Linux.

It is based upon elements of the Software Carpentries Shell(novice) and Shell(extras) courses. It is recommended for those CI personnel planning on attending the CI High Performance Computing facilities (Cluster) course.

This course is run by the CRUK CI Bioinformatics and IT core.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

Day 1 will introduce you to next generation sequencing technologies (NGS) and how they work, providers, common bioinformatics workflows, standardised file types, quality control. This session will include an introduction to Galaxy. Galaxy is an open, web-based platform for data-intensive life science research that enables non-bioinformaticians to create, run, tune, and share their own bioinformatic analyses.

Day 2 will be hands-on practicals on using Galaxy to explore sequencing quality control, before and after removal of low quality samples. This forms the core of all NGS analyses and this day will conclude with how this data pipes into gene expression studies, variant calling and genome assemblies.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Galaxy (http://galaxyproject.org/) is an open, web-based platform for data intensive life science research that enables non-bioinformaticians to create, run, tune, and share bioinformatic analyses. The goal of this course is to demonstrate how to use Galaxy to explore RNA-seq data, for expression profiling, and ChIP-seq data, to assess genomic DNA binding sites. You will learn how to perform analysis in Galaxy, and then how to share, repeat, and reproduce your analyses.

The timetable for this event can be found here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book by linking here.

This course provides an introduction to the analysis of human genome sequence variation with next generation sequencing data (NGS), including:

• an introduction to genetic variation as well as data formats and analysis workflows commonly used in NGS data analysis;
• an overview of available analytical tools and discussion of their limitations; and
• hands-on experience with common computational workflows for analysing genome sequence variation using bioinformatics and computational genomics approaches.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

This course provides an introduction to high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data analysis methodologies. Lectures will give insight into how biological knowledge can be generated from RNA-seq, ChIP-seq and DNA-seq experiments and illustrate different ways of analyzing such data. Practicals will consist of computer exercises that will enable the participants to apply statistical methods to the analysis of RNA-seq, ChIP-seq and DNA-seq data under the guidance of the lecturers and teaching assistants. It is aimed at researchers who are applying or planning to apply HTS technologies and bioinformatics methods in their research.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

The course will cover ANOVA, linear regression and some extensions. It will be a mixture of lectures and hands-on time using RStudio to analyse data.

This event is part of a series of training courses organized in collaboration with the Bioinformatics Core Facility at CRUK Cambridge Institute.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

The goal of metabolomics is to identify and quantify the complete biochemical composition of a biological sample. With the increase in genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic information there is a growing need to understand the metabolic phenotype that these genes and proteins ultimately control.

The aim of this course is to provide an introductory overview of metabolomics and its applications in life sciences and environmental settings. We will introduce different techniques used to extract metabolites and analyse samples to collect metabolomic data (such as HPLC or GC-based MS and NMR), present how to analyse such data, how to identify metabolites using online databases and how to map the metabolomic data to metabolic pathways.

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
• Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.

This workshop will focus on the theory and applications of metagenomics for the analysis of complex microbiomes (microbial communities). We will cover a range of methods from the fastest, simplest and cheapest amplicon-based methods up to Hi-C metagenomics techniques that give highly detailed results on complex microbial communities. In addition to the theory, we will introduce several bioinformatic software packages suited for the analysis of metagenomic data, quality control and downstream analysis and interpretation of the results.

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.

This course will teach you how to use molecular data to construct and interpret phylogenies. We will start by introducing basic concepts in phylogenetic analysis, what trees represent and how to interpret them. We will then cover how to produce a multiple sequence alignment from DNA and protein sequences, and the pros and cons of different alignment algorithms. You will then learn about different methods of phylogenetic inference, with a particular focus on maximum likelihood and how to assess confidence in your tree using bootstrap resampling. Finally, we will introduce how Bayesian methods can help to estimate the uncertainty in the inferred tree parameters as well as incorporate information for more advanced/bespoke phylogenetic analysis.

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
• Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.

This course provides a practical introduction to the writing of Python programs for the complete novice. Participants are lead through the core concepts of Python including Python syntax, data structures and reading/writing files. These are illustrated by a series of example programs. Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to write simple Python programs.

If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

• Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
• Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.