Leading Professional Society for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
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Workshops

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Sponsored Workshop - Unlocking Cellular Insights: AWS Cloud Solutions for Advanced Omics and Generative AI in Research

Date: May 27, 2026 8:00-13:00
Objective: This workshop will help participants learn how to access and analyze data from AWS (Amazon Web Services) Open Data, leveraging AWS cloud services and accelerating their build through Kiro, an agentic IDE (Integrated Development Environment).
Audience: Graduate students and researchers who want practical knowledge on how to use agentic and cloud-based solutions in your research workflows.
Capacity: 60
Format: In-person

Timing Outline
08:00-09:00 Breakfast and Registration
09:00-09:15 Welcome & Introduction to AWS Open Data
Facilitator:  Beryl Rabindran, Life Sciences Lead, AWS Open Data
09:15-10:00 Module 1: Accessing Data from AWS Open Data
Facilitator: Cristian Chicas, Solutions Architect, AWS
Contents:
  • Registry of Open Data on AWS
  • Using the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI)
  • Accessing data programmatically through a Software Development Kit (SDK)
10:00-10:45 Module 2: Lightsail for Research
10:45-11:30 Module 3: Genomics Use Case with Kiro
Facilitator: Hailey D’Silva, Solutions Architect, AWS
11:30-12:00 Other use cases and resources
Facilitator: Hailey D’Silva, Solutions Architect, AWS
12:00-13:00 Lunch & Networking Session (includes participants from all workshops)

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Workshop 1 - Bioinformatics as a Career: An insider view

Date: May 27, 2026 8:00-13:00 
Objective: This event will be led by current Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Data Science (BCBDS) trainees to raise awareness about and engage undergraduate students in the broad applications and career paths in BCBDS.
Audience: Undergraduates interested in learning more about BCBDS career paths and graduate students keen to share their BCBDS experiences
Capacity: 60
Format: Hybrid
Room: CR-3 and online

Timing Outline
08:00-9:00 Breakfast and Registration
09:00-9:15 Welcome & Introduction (In-person + Virtual)
Facilitator: Tarah Lynch, Founder & Eecutive Leadership Coach, Synergy Scientific Coaching & Consulting and Program Lead - Genomics and Bioinformatics, University of Calgary
  • Audience participation activity on slido: 
    • What do you think is the role and importance of bioinformatics in life and health science research?
    • What kinds of jobs do you think benefit from bioinformatics skills? 
09:15-09:30 Gauging career prospect sentiments
  • Per table: Describe how you feel about your career plans in weather terms & explain why
09:30-10:15 Interactive Panel Discussion with Trainee Presenters (In-person + Virtual)
Each shares educational background, research focus and career journey:
  • Katie Houlahan, Assistant Professor, Dept. Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research, McMaster University
  • Sabiq Chaudhary, Principal Bioinformatics Software Engineer, Roche Diagnostics Solutions graduated into industry
  • Nancy T. Li, Outreach Coordinator, Computational Biology, OICR graduated into not-for-profit research
  • Heather Gibling, Computational Biologist, Public Health Ontario graduated into government
10:15-10:45 Coffee Break & Networking
10:45-12:15 Hands-on activity: Designing your career path
Facilitator:  Comment start Amanda Mohabeer, Founder, Beyond the BSc
  • Overview of Bioinformatics Competencies
  • Overview of Individual Development Plan
In this guided activity, participants will work in small groups to help each other identify their professional interests and connect them to the career profiles from the ISCB competency framework. Once they’ve identified a set of career profiles, they will work on creating a basic individual development plan.
12:25-12:55 Lunch & Networking Session (includes participants from Workshop #2 and #3)
  • Career tables: Each table will be focused on one career profile. The table will be facilitated by an individual with a given type of career. Participants will be encouraged to join their chosen career table as well as to explore alternative careers
  • One-on-one: Conversations and informal mentoring
12:55-13:00 Concluding Activity
Audience participation activity on Slido:
  • What do you think is the role of bioinformatics in life and health science research?
  • What kinds of jobs do you think benefit from bioinformatics skills? 

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Workshop 2 - Nurturing an Early Career (EC) growth ecosystem in Canada

Date: May 27, 2026 12:00-17:00
Objective: This event will be a working group meeting for early career (EC) professionals to gather the infrastructure, resources and career supports needed to elevate and retain ECs in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Data Science (BCBDS) careers in Canada.
Audience: Early career professionals in BCBDS who want to become aware of available career supports and bring attention to the gaps, and leaders who want to collaborate on finding solutions to help ECs in BCBDS excel.
Capacity: 45
Format: In-person
Room: CR-3

Timing Outline
12:00-13:00 Lunch & Networking Session (includes participants from Workshop #1 and #3)
13:00-13:15 Welcome & Introductions (In-person) Audience participation activity on Slido: 
Facilitator: Tarah Lynch, Founder & Executive Leadership Coach, Synergy Scientific Coaching & Consulting and Program Lead - Genomics and Bioinformatics, University of Calgary
  • What is the most urgent support needed by ECs in bioinformatics?
  • My current challenge is?
13:15-13:30 Gauging career sentiments

Per table: Describe how you feel about your overall career in weather terms & explain why
13:30-14:30 Setting the Stage - Early Career Professional Perspectives
Each shares career journey, opportunities and challenges encountered to date:
  • Gregory Schwartz, Scientist, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network and Assistant Professor, Dept. Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto
  • Tallulah Andrews, Assistant Professor Dept. Biochemistry, University of Western Ontario
  • Nava Leibovich, Research Officer, National Research Council Canada
  • Jonathan Broadbent, Computational Scientist Lead, Sanofi
14:30-15:00 Coffee Break & Networking
14:45-16:15 Breakout Groups
Each to identify opportunities and barriers, and propose solutions/strategies:
  • Funding and grant opportunities
  • Collaboration and networking
  • Mentorship and career development
  • Career advancement and EDI
  • Work-life balance and mental health
16:15-17:00 Report Back & Next Steps
  • Discussion highlights (1 slide) and recommendations (1 slide) per breakout group
  • Next steps to drafting a BCBDS professional development strategy
  • Identification of initiative owners
17:00 Concluding Activity
Audience participation activity on Slido: 
  • What is the most urgent support needed by ECs in bioinformatics/computational biology?
  • Was a solution proposed for my current challenge?

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Workshop 3 - Reproducible Research: Essentials for Managing Your Data

Date: May 27, 2026 12:00-17:00
Objective: This workshop will equip participants with the essential methods and tools to manage their data efficiently, ensuring their research is reproducible, discoverable and machine-actionable.
Audience: Graduate students who want to make their work more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Participants should have basic familiarity with Unix/Linux and command line tools. 
Requirements: You will also require your own laptop computer. Minimum requirements: 1024×768 screen resolution, 1.5GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, 10GB free disk space, recent versions of Windows, Mac OS X or Linux (Most computers purchased in the past 3-4 years likely meet these requirements). This workshop requires participants to complete pre-workshop tasks and readings.
Capacity: 45
Format: In-person
Room: CR-2

Timing Outline
12:00-13:00 Lunch & Networking Session (includes participants from Workshop #1 and #2)
13:00-13:15 Welcome & Introductions
13:15-13:30 Module 1: Introduction to Research Data Management (RDM) - Mélanie Courtot
  • What is data management and why should you care?
  • Open science and RDM principles
13:30-14:30 Module 2: Version Control with Git - Mitchell Shiell and Linda Xiang
(20 min lecture, 40 min lab)
  • Why use version control?
  • Git and GitHub
    • Creating repos, push, pull, commit
    • Collaborative coding: pull requests, code owners
  • Lab: Practicing version control in Git through command line/VSCode
14:30-15:00 Coffee Break & Networking
15:00-16:00 Module 3: Organizing Your Data for Machine-Actionability - Hardeep Nahal-Bose and Edmund Su
(20 min lecture, 40 min lab)
  • Ontologies and knowledge graphs
  • Schemas and data models
  • Lab: Converting between data representation formats, mapping data to a different model, validating data
16:00-17:00 Module 4: Facilitating Discovery of your Datasets using Open Source Platforms and Standards - David Bujold
(20 min lecture, 40 min lab)
  • Containerization, cloud-services, open-source data management software
  • Leveraging International Standards such as from GA4GH
  • Metadata, linked data, types of databases (centralized vs. federated)
  • Demo/lab: Exploration of data management platform Bento and discovering data using the Beacon API

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