To allow for efficient partnership with these many fields, a large and diverse workforce is necessary. Because of the difficulty in recruiting such specialised individuals, an important part of the effort goes into training to develop new bioinformaticians as well as to train further researchers in biology, computer science, etc. In this context, the agreement with BGI is most useful. The organisation of training courses is therefore essential for the proper application and development of Bioinformatics. Training reaches out to students with backgrounds as diverse as Biology, Computer Sciences and Statistics, and encompasses three parts, namely Core Knowledge, Global Bioinformatics and Specific Applications. The first part is given in collaboration with the Schools of Mathematics (Statistics) and Computer Science to provide the basic understanding of genomics and analysis from design to computation. The second, and largest, section covers both classic bioinformatics such as database access, mapping or microarray analysis, as well as more recent developments from Next Generation Sequencing, e.g. RNASeq, ChipSeq. Finally, in Specific Applications, the focus is the many applications of Bioinformatics in collaboration with the relevant fields of Medicine or Environmental Genomics. Lectures are given from both Bioinformaticians and relevant external speakers.
A strong and successful partnership has been formed with the Research Support Section of IT Services who have designed and built the core infrastructure to meet the challenging data analytics and storage needs of life sciences research. These IT specialists work with the CCB community to develop and deliver applications suites, tailored to our research needs. The team also delivers some core skills training, runs clinics and gets involved in key initiatives such as the Academic Programmers Special Interest Group (SIG). The expertise in technology and data science as well as the commitment of the Research Support Section provide essential underpinnings to the CCB.