BIOINFORMATICS CURRICULUM GUIDELINES AND CORE COMPETENCIES

By Lonnie Welch

The Curriculum Task Force of ISCB"s Education Committee released a report in March 2014, detailing a set of guidelines for bioinformatics educators. Rapid advances in the life sciences and in related information technologies necessitate the ongoing refinement of bioinformatics educational programs in order to maintain their relevance.

As the discipline of bioinformatics and computational biology expands and matures, it is important to characterize the elements that contribute to the success of professionals in this field. These individuals work in a wide variety of settings, including bioinformatics core facilities, and medical research laboratories, software development organizations, pharmaceutical and instrument development companies, and institutions that provide education, service, and training. In response to this need, the Curriculum Task Force of the ISCB Education Committee seeks to define curricular guidelines for those who train and educate
bioinformaticians.

The bioinformatics literature provides valuable perspectives on bioinformatics education by defining skill sets needed by
bioinformaticians, presenting approaches for providing informatics training to biologists, and discussing the roles of bioinformatics core facilities in training and education. The current report of the Curriculum Task Force expands the body of knowledge by presenting the results from a broad set of surveys (of core facility directors, of career opportunities, and of existing curricula). The article presents an initial set of core competencies that were derived from the surveys, and relates the competencies to three different categories of bioinformatics training.

The Curriculum Task Force is currently focusing on implementation and refinement of its curriculum guidelines. An open forum Birds of a Feather session will be held at ISMB 2014, on Tuesday July 15, 2014 at 12:45 p.m.

Read the full article:
Citation: Welch L, Lewitter F, Schwartz R, Brooksbank C, Radivojac P, et al. (2014) Bioinformatics Curriculum Guidelines: Toward a Definition of Core Competencies. PLoS Comput Biol 10(3): e1003496. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003496.