International big data training school at SLU

The life sciences research field is experiencing a technical and cultural revolution with the development of new high throughput technologies. Scenarios that were a dream just a few years ago are now reality, most researchers produce complex data in tera- if not petabyte amounts.

Most life science researchers are now planning not just to sequence one gene at the time or just one organism at the time but today most scientific projects are close to systems biology and projects sequence complete communities that interact.

This is creating technical problems around the analysis of such data, high intensive analysis using super computers, huge amounts of storage facilities, more advanced and complex analysis of networks etcetera. We are interested in solutions existing today but also in future technologies and visions on how we could solve the mentioned issues.

For this reason the EU COST “Harmonising standardisation strategies to increase efficiency and competitiveness of European life-science research” (CHARME) organised a one week training school entitled "Big Data Training School for Life Sciences", during 18 and 21 September, at Ultuna Campus.

The school was attended by 25 EU citizens and five participants from Africa, South America and Asia. The students were selected by a scientific committee according to their needs and research projects and took also in consideration a geographical distribution. Ten teachers were engaged during the week.

SLU is the grant Holder of this COST Action and Vice chair of the action is Professor Erik Bongcam-Rudloff. www.cost-charme.eu.

Text and photos: Erik Bongcam-Rudloff