RECOMB Education Satellite Meeting

The new RECOMB Satellite Conference on Bioinformatics Education
(RECOMB-BE; http://casb.calit2.net/bioed/) hit the circuit March 14-15, 2009, with Pavel Pevzner (University of California, San Diego) and Ron Shamir (Tel Aviv University) serving as the conference chairs, and Nitin Gupta, Sangtae Kim, Mark Chaisson, Alex Wong and Laura Gracia making up the program committee. Over 135 participated in this event at the Center for Algorithmic and Systems Biology (CASB) on the UCSD campus.

Pevzner and Shamir felt the field was ripe for an in depth meeting on this topic, noting “a dramatic paradigm shift in biology education” resulting from the increasing number of universities now offering undergraduate bioinformatics programs, coupled with the frequent discussions about adding new computational courses to the standard biology curriculum. The question of “How to teach bioinformatics to biology students?” is therefore coming up more and more with each passing year. But they decided on an unusual format, focusing on "how bioinformatics should be taught” by showcasing how leading bioinformaticians actually teach. Speakers gave short, introductory-level lectures aimed at undergraduates, and the lectures were videotaped for post-conference access from the conference website.

This inaugural meeting was intended to feature best practices and discuss existing challenges in bioinformatics education, with an emphasis on undergraduate education. To achieve this, the chairs and organizing committee members brought an exceptional lineup of local and international speakers together for a day and a half of 20 invited talks four lively discussion panels, and poster sessions of research projects conducted by undergraduate students.

The meeting generated lots of great energy and momentum, and plans are already underway for a follow up event next March. Nothing to announce yet, but do stay tuned. Until then, enjoy the video archive on the conference website.