All Bioinformatics courses

Please note that this course has been discontinued and has been replaced by the Introduction to R for biologists.

This course introduces some relatively new additions to the R programming language: dplyr and ggplot2. In combination these R packages provide a powerful toolkit to make the process of manipulating and visualising data easy and intuitive.

Materials for this course can be found here.

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 by linking here.

Please be aware that this course is currently being re-developed and will not be scheduled to run until redevelopment has been completed. If you are interested in being notified once the course is scheduled, please register your interest.

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 course covers concepts and strategies for working more effectively with Python with the aim of writing reusable code, using function and libraries. Participants will acquire a working knowledge of key concepts which are prerequisites for advanced programming in Python e.g. writing modules and classes.

Note: this course is the continuation of the Introduction to Solving Biological Problems with Python; participants are expected to have attended the introductory Python course and/or have acquired some working knowledge of Python. This course is also open to Python beginners who are already fluent in other programming languages as this will help them to quickly get started in Python.

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 EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED!

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 School aims to familiarise biomedical students and researchers with principles of Data Science. Focusing on utilising machine learning algorithms to handle biomedical data, it will cover: effects of experimental design, data readiness, pipeline implementations, machine learning in Python, and related statistics, as well as Gaussian Process models.

Providing practical experience in the implementation of machine learning methods relevant to biomedical applications, including Gaussian processes, we will illustrate best practices that should be adopted in order to enable reproducibility in any data science application.

This event is sponsored by Cambridge Centre for Data-Driven Discovery (C2D3).

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 three day workshop will bring together representatives of the ELIXIR Galaxy Working Group, as well as trainers and developers working on the Galaxy project from Europe and beyond, to:

• Build on an existing collection of Galaxy training materials. During the workshop we will collate additional materials, including topics relevant to the ELIXIR use-cases, and ensure that, for each workflow, a minimum set of training materials is available, including slides, practical exercises, Docker containers, and Galaxy tours.
• 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 they are properly described, according to the ELIXIR/GOBLET guidelines, and BioSchemas compliant.
• Extend the existing “curated” dataset collection and assign DOI to individual datasets.
• Increase the number of Docker/Virtual Machines available for easy installation of Galaxy training environments.
• Explore the feasibility of developing a toolkit to facilitate plug in of different datasets in existing training material/workflows through a templating approach.

This event is supported by ELIXIR-EXCELERATE, an European Commission grant within the Research Infrastructures programme of Horizon 2020, grant agreement number 676559.

This module introduces the area of sequence similarity searching and focuses on how to use tools like BLAST and PSI-Search to find homologous sequences in EMBL-EBI databases, including tips on which tool and database to use, input formats, how to change parameters and how to interpret the results pages.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

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.

This workshop will introduce students to EMBL-EBI, the databases and services it offers, and basic concepts in bioinformatics that will be of use to their disease related research work.

It will explain the role of the EMBL-EBI in curating and sharing biological data with scientists around the world, and introduce concepts for locating relevant data and information of interest.

Sessions with trainers from Ensembl, ArrayExpress and the GWAS catalog will introduce practical skills in browsing genes and variation in a genomic context, in exploring SNP-trait associations and will show how further understanding can be gained on the location and level of gene expression across the body.

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.

Are you aware of the wide range of protein data resources that can easily be accessed and explored to enhance your research? Do you want to know more about the sequence of your protein and its functions? Wondered whether a structure of your protein exists and how to explore it? Want to know more about the potential complexes and reaction pathways your protein of interest is involved in, giving you a better overview of its biological context?

This three day workshop will introduce you to data resources and tools developed by EMBL-EBI that can help you in your protein studies. Each day will focus on a particular protein topic, with the aim of helping you get more from your data and also to explore publically-available data that can further support your research.

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 clicking here.

This interactive workshop offers participants hands-on experience in the use of the Ensembl VEP to annotate genetic variants with the effects they have on Ensembl genes, and the known information about co-located variants. We will also look at known genes and variants, including the types of data available and where they come from.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

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

This interactive workshop offers participants hands-on experience in the use of the European Variation Archive, EVA. The EVA is an open-access, genetic variation data repository, currently hosting more than 80 studies describing in excess of 520 million unique variants. Participants will be shown how this data can be searched for at the study level via the EVA Study Browser, or at the individual variant level, via our Variant Browser. Finally, participants shall also be shown how to access this wealth of genetic variation data via the EVA API.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

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.

This workshop is aimed at giving life scientists training on how to explore and use protein interaction and pathway bioinformatics resources. This course looks at the data repositories, resources and tools available and shows attendees how to both find information on a single molecule and how to build high-quality networks to enable network analysis.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

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.

This workshop will give an introduction to the protein interaction database IntAct and the Complex Portal service. You will also briefly learn how to visualise protein interactions using the Cytoscape application.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

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

This workshop will give an introduction to the Reactome pathway database website and analysis tools, using short presentations and practical hands-on exercises. The session will also explain where to learn more, get help, and how to become involved in adding more pathway information to Reactome.

Further information can be found here.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

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

An introduction to the chemogenomics resources available from the EBI. The workshop will cover resources such as ChEMBL, SureChEMBL, UniChem and Open Targets.

This session is one of a series of short introductions to EBI Services, run together, but bookable separately (see Related Courses section below).

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 workshop is an introduction to EMBL-EBI and the life science data resources it provides. Participants will be shown how to navigate the website and search for appropriate database resources and tools, whilst also highlighting resources such as Train online (our e-learning portal) and the literature resources at Europe PMC.

This workshop will not focus on a set of specific resources; for more focused workshops please see the others within this series (see the Related Courses section below)

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

Employ InterPro to help you answer your research questions!

This workshop will help you find out why there is a need to automatically annotate proteins, how protein family databases can help meet this challenge, and how InterPro pulls together a number of such databases, allowing you to classify unknown protein sequences and identify their function. The module is a combination of presentations and hands-on practical exercises. You will explore the various features of an InterPro entry, and design a workflow to utilise InterPro in the analysis of real world data.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

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.

The European Nucleotide Sequence Archive (ENA) is a global database for storing experimental nucleotide data and also interpreted data (alignment files, variant calling, analysis results). ENA is the database where all raw and consensus viral sequence data should be deposited, including SARS-Cov-2 data. The data is submitted by scientists conducting sequencing experiments and publishing research in the area. Data is fully searchable and available for download. Sequence data includes raw NGS files (FastQ, BAM…), assembled genomes and transcriptomes, and annotated sequences (protein coding genes, non coding RNA, barcode genes, HLA genes).

This training is aimed at a wide range of users that need to retrieve data from ENA, either occasionally or on a regular basis, or those users who will have retrieval needs closer to the course time.

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 basic theory and concepts of network analysis. Attendees will learn how to construct protein-protein interaction networks and subsequently use these to overlay large-scale data such as that obtained through RNA-Seq or mass-spec proteomics. The course will focus on giving attendees hands-on experience in the use of one of the most commonly used open source Network Visualisation Platforms, Cytoscape. The course will also access and analyse the data through Cytoscape apps, including IntAct app.

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.

This course will give an introduction to the basic concepts of ontologies and how they are useful in biological applications. We will explain what a biomedical ontology is and present the two primary types of ontology: (i) domain ontology and (ii) application ontology, using examples as Gene Ontology (GO) and Experimental Factor Ontology (EFO). The module will also go into details of why big data need ontologies and the ontology capabilities in advanced computational biology.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

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.

This workshop aims to give the scientific community hands on experience on how to access and effectively use protein data in UniProt. UniProt is a high-quality, comprehensively and thoroughly annotated protein resource. Participants will be able to access detailed information on protein function and millions of protein sequences in the UniProt knowledgebase, including isoforms and disease variants.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

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.

PLEASE NOTE The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching as many courses live online. 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 workshop is designed for researchers interested in learning about functional genomics data, how to access, retrieve and use the data from ArrayExpress and hands-on experience in using Expression Atlas, a resource to find information about gene and protein expression across species and biological conditions such as different tissues, cell types, developmental stages and diseases among others. This will include an overview on how gene expression data is curated and analysed in Expression Atlas and a practical activity to demonstrate how to access and visualise gene expression analysis results. These activities should help you answer questions such as "where is my favourite gene expressed?" or "how does its expression change in a disease?".

This workshop is not going to be a session on how to run your own bioinformatics analysis but to use the tools that have been developed in order to be able to take advantage of others’ work and prepare your work to be reproducible.

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 Ensembl project provides an interface and an infrastructure for accessing genomic information, including genes, variants, comparative genomics and gene regulation data, covering over 300 vertebrate species.

This workshop is aimed at researchers and developers interested in exploring Ensembl beyond the website. The workshop covers how to use the Ensembl REST APIs, including understanding the major endpoints and how to write scripts to call them.

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.

What are the cognitive differences between novices, competent practitioners, and experts? Do different people really have different learning styles? Do flipped classrooms actually work better than regular lectures? This tutorial will explore recent research in these areas and more, and show participants how to apply that research in the classroom to improve teaching.

This tutorial is a condensed version of the instructor training program that Software Carpentry has been running for the past three years. In it, we will explore a handful of research results in educational psychology, and see how to use those findings to build more effective lessons.

Greg Wilson is the Executive Director of the Software Carpentry Foundation, a volunteer non-profit organization that teaches researchers basic lab skills for scientific computing.

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

This event will consist of two parts. The first part of the workshop aims to provide new trainers with guidance and tips for developing and delivering training in bioinformatics, exploring a range of methods appropriate to different learning styles and examining the requirements for a successful course (both scientific and logistic). It will be based on the EXCELERATE Train-the-Trainer (TtT) course materials and content will be tailored to trainers that are involved in teaching bioinformatics to clinical audiences.

The second part of the workshop will focus on "Best practices in clinical bioinformatics training", providing an opportunity for people already involved in this kind of training, or in the process of developing it, to come together and exchange best practice/experiences. Participants will include training providers of the Health Education England’s MSc in Genomics Medicine from several UK Universities as well as other providers active in this area, from around Europe and beyond.

This event is co-sponsored by ELIXIR-EXCELERATE and Health Education England (HEE).

This one-day course is primarily aimed at life science researchers, but covers many topics that are applicable to other fields. It combines key theoretical knowledge with practical application, which will aid researchers in designing effective experiments. The focus throughout the course is to link experimental design to a clear analysis strategy. This ensures that the collected data will be suitable for statistical analysis. During this course, we cover:

• Practices in experimental design that lead to high quality research
• Common design pitfalls, and how to avoid or mitigate them
• A brief introduction to more advanced analysis techniques for experiments with unusual or complex designs

Topics included in the course include: crafting a good research question, operationalising variables effectively, identifying and dealing with confounding variables and pseudoreplication, and practical tips for power analysis and piloting.

The course is delivered via a mix of lectures, group discussion and worked examples.

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.

Modern technologies are able to deliver an unprecedented amount of data rapidly. However, without due care and attention early in the experimental process, such data are meaningless if they cannot adequately answer the intended research question. This course is aimed at those planning high-throughput experiments and highlights the kinds of questions they should be asking themselves. The course consists of a lecture and small-group discussions led by a member of the Genomics or Bioinformatics Cores.

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 your interest by linking here.

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.