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This week-long course is aimed at people with little or no experience using statistical analyses in research. It introduces participants to core concepts in statistics and experimental design, aimed at ensuring that the resulting data is able to address the research question using appropriate statistical methods.

The interactive course gives participants a hands-on, applied foundation in statistical data analysis and experimental design. Group exercises and discussions are combined with short lectures that introduce key theoretical concepts. Computational methods are used throughout the course, using the R programming language. Formative assessment exercises allow participants to test their understanding throughout the course and encourage questions and critical thinking.

By the end of the course participants will be able to critically evaluate and design effective research questions, linking experimental design concepts to subsequent statistical analyses. It will allow participants to make informed decisions on which statistical tests are most appropriate to their research questions. The course will provide a solid grounding for further development of applied statistical competencies.

As a follow-up of this course, we run an extra optional session on 25 April. This is an applied, hands-on session where you can bring your own data and we provide direct support to your analysis. This is exclusively available to participants on this course.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Analysis of bulk RNA-seq data (IN-PERSON) Fri 21 Jun 2024   09:30 Not bookable

In this course you will acquire practical skills in RNA-seq data analysis. You will learn about quality control, alignment, and quantification of gene expression against a reference transcriptome. Additionally, you will learn to conduct downstream analysis in R, exploring techniques like PCA and clustering for exploratory analysis. The course also covers differential expression analysis using the DESeq2 R/Bioconductor package. Furthermore, the course covers how to generate visualisations like heatmaps and performing gene set testing to link differential genes with established biological functions or pathways.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
  • Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.
Analysis of ChIP-seq data (ONLINE LIVE TRAINING) Thu 20 Jul 2023   09:30 Finished

Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing (ChIP-seq) is a method used to identify binding sites for transcription factors, histone modifications and other DNA-binding proteins across the genome. In this course, we will cover the fundamentals of ChIP-seq data analysis, from raw data to downstream applications.

We will start with an introduction to ChIP-seq methods, including important considerations when designing your experiments. We will cover the bioinformatic steps in a standard ChIP-seq analysis workflow, covering raw data quality control, trimming/filtering, mapping, duplicate removal, post-mapping quality control, peak calling and peak annotation. We will discuss metrics used for quality assessment of the called peaks when multiple replicates are available, as well as the analysis of differential binding across sample groups. Throughout the course we will also cover tools and packages that can be used for visualising and exploring your results.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
Analysis of ChIP-seq Data with SeqMonk (IN-PERSON) new Fri 5 Jul 2024   09:30 [Places]

Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing (ChIP-seq) is a method used to identify binding sites for transcription factors, histone modifications and other DNA-binding proteins across the genome. In this course, we will cover the fundamentals of ChIP-seq data analysis, from raw data to downstream applications.

We will start with an introduction to ChIP-seq methods and cover the bioinformatic steps in processing ChIP-seq data. We will then introduce the use of the graphical program SeqMonk to explore and visualise your data. Finally, you will perform peak calling and perform differential enrichment analysis.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
  • Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.

This course will cover all aspects of the analysis of DNA methylation using sequencing, including primary analysis, mapping and quality control of BS-Seq data, common pitfalls and complications.

It will also include exploratory analysis of methylation, looking at different methods of quantitation, and a variety of ways of looking more widely at the distribution of methylation over the genome. Finally the course will look at statistical methods to predict differential methylation.

The course comprises of a mixture of theoretical lectures and practicals covering a range of different software packages.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
  • Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.

This workshop focuses on expression proteomics, which aims to characterise the protein diversity and abundance in a particular system. You will learn about the bioinformatic analysis steps involved when working with these kind of data, in particular several dedicated proteomics Bioconductor packages, part of the R programming language. We will use real-world datasets obtained from label free quantitation (LFQ) as well as tandem mass tag (TMT) mass spectrometry. We cover the basic data structures used to store and manipulate protein abundance data, how to do quality control and filtering of the data, as well as several visualisations. Finally, we include statistical analysis of differential abundance across sample groups (e.g. control vs. treated) and further evaluation and biological interpretation of the results via gene ontology analysis. By the end of this workshop you should have the skills to make sense of expression proteomics data, from start to finish.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
  • Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.

This advanced course will cover high-throughput sequencing data processing, ChIP-seq data analysis (including alignment, peak calling), differences in analyses methods for transcription factors (TF) binding and epigenomic datasets, a range of downstream analysis methods for extracting meaningful biology from ChIP-seq data and will provide an introduction to the analysis of open chromatin with ATAC-seq and long-distance interactions with chromosomal conformation capture based Hi-C datasets.

Materials for this course can be found here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

This course provides an introduction to the tools available through the Bioconductor project for manipulating and analysing high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data. We will present workflows for the analysis of ChIP-Seq and RNA-seq data starting from aligned reads in bam format. We will also describe the various resources available through Bioconductor to annotate and visualize HTS data, which can be applied to any type of sequencing experiment.

The course timetable is available here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

PLEASE NOTE that until further notice, due to the evolving situation with Coronavirus no courses will be offered as classroom based at the Training Facility. The Bioinformatics Team will be teaching the course live online in conjunction with the presenters.

SeqMonk is a graphical program for the visualisation and analysis of large mapped sequencing datasets such as ChIP-Seq, RNA-Seq, and BS-Seq.

The program allows you to view your reads against an annotated genome and to quantitate and filter your data to let you identify regions of interest. It is a friendly way to explore and analysis very large datasets.

This course provides an introduction to the main features of SeqMonk and will run through the analysis of a couple of different datasets to show what sort of analysis options it provides.

Further information is available here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Analysis of RNA-seq data with Bioconductor Wed 28 Mar 2018   09:30 Finished

This course provides an introduction to the tools available through the Bioconductor project for manipulating and analysing bulk RNA-seq data. We will present a workflow for the analysis RNA-seq data starting from aligned reads in bam format and producing a list of differentially-expressed genes. We will also describe the various resources available through Bioconductor to annotate, visualise and gain biological insight from the differential expression results.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

Analysis of single cell RNA-seq data (IN-PERSON) Thu 16 May 2024   09:30 [Full]

Recent technological advances have made it possible to obtain genome-wide transcriptome data from single cells using high-throughput sequencing (scRNA-seq). Even though scRNA-seq makes it possible to address problems that are intractable with bulk RNA-seq data, analysing scRNA-seq is also more challenging.

In this course we will be surveying the existing problems as well as the available computational and statistical frameworks available for the analysis of scRNA-seq.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
  • Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.
Analysis of small RNA-seq data new Tue 2 May 2017   09:30 Finished

This course focuses on methods for the analysis of small non-coding RNA data obtained from high-throughput sequencing (HTS) applications (small RNA-seq). During the course, approaches to the investigation of all classes of small non-coding RNAs will be presented, in all organisms.

Day 1 will focus on the analysis of microRNAs and day 2 will cover the analysis of other types of small RNAs, including Piwi-interacting (piRNA), small interfering (siRNA), small nucleolar (snoRNA) and tRNA-derived (tsRNA).

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

This webinar is an Introduction to Biological Networks, their types, and applications. It will include two of the most commonly used open source Network Visualisation Platforms (R-igraph and Cytoscape) with step-wise protocols for creating and visualising your own data as a network. It will present some of the major layout algorithms, visual styles and tips for effective visualisation, with examples from biology revealing how these can improve analysis and provide insights.

The webinar will be presented in the form of a lecture as well as a tutorial with step-wise screenshots that enable listeners to emulate simple Network creation and analysis. Please note that this is a webinar and not a coding exercise. Links to publicly available resources and hands-on tutorials will be shared with you for further reading and practice.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Through the use of real world examples and the JMP, JMP Pro, and JMP Genomics software, we will cover best practices used in both industry and academia today to visually explore data, plan biological experiments, detect differential expression patterns, find signals in next-generation sequencing data and easily discover statistically appropriate biomarker profiles and patterns.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

An introduction to long-read sequencing new Thu 13 Feb 2020   09:30 Finished

Analysis of whole genome data unearths a multitude of variants of different classes, which need to be filtered, annotated and validated to arrive at a causative variant for a disease. The current short length sequences, whilst being excellent at identifying single nucleotide variants and short insertions/deletions, struggle to correctly map structural variants (SVs). Long-read sequencing technologies offer improvements in the characterisation of genetic variation and regions that are difficult to assess with short-read sequences.

The aim of this course is to familiarise participants with long read sequencing technologies, their applications and the bioinformatics tools used to assemble this kind of data. Lectures will introduce this technology and provide insight into methods for the analysis of genomic data, while the hands-on sessions will allow participants to run analysis pipelines, focusing on data generated by the Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) platform.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

THIS COURSE IS NOT RETURNING IN ITS CURRENT FORM. PLEASE CHECK OUR WEBSITE FOR MORE INFORMATION.

Machine learning gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. It encompasses a broad range of approaches to data analysis with applicability across the biological sciences. Lectures will introduce commonly used algorithms and provide insight into their theoretical underpinnings. In the practicals students will apply these algorithms to real biological data-sets using the R language and environment.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

PLEASE NOTE The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching as many courses live online, with tutors available to help you work through the course material on a personal copy of the course environment. We aim to simulate the classroom experience as closely as possible, with opportunities for one-to-one discussion with tutors and a focus on interactivity throughout.

This course aims to give you an introduction to the basics of Matlab. During the two day course we will use a practical based approach to give you the confidence to start using Matlab in your own work. In particular we will show you how to write your own scripts and functions and how to use pre-written functions. We will also explore the many ways in which help is available to Matlab users. In addition we will cover basic computer programming in Matlab to enable you to write more efficient scripts.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

The aim of this course is to introduce participants to the basics of statistical analysis and the open source statistical software R, a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.

Participants will actively use R throughout the course, during which they will be introduced to principles of statistical thinking and interpretation by example, exercises and discussion about a range of problems. The examples will be used to present a variety of statistical concepts and techniques, with no focus on any specific discipline.

Important information: We have 12 configured laptops for use at the workshop. After these laptops have been allocated, participants will either need to share, or bring their own. These laptops will be allocated to the first individuals to express an interest in using them. When booking, please indicate under "Special requirements" if you wish to use one of the 12 laptops or bring your own. Participants bringing their own laptop will be given instructions on what software to install.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register interest by linking here.

This course is aimed at those new to programming and provides an introduction to programming using Perl.

During this course you will learn the basics of the Perl programming language, including how to store data in Perl’s standard data structures such as arrays and hashes, and how to process data using loops, functions, and many of Perl’s built in operators. You will learn how to write and run your own Perl scripts and how to pass options and files to them. The course also covers sorting, regular expressions, references and multi-dimensional data structures.

The course will be taught using the online Learning Perl materials created by Sofia Robb of the University of California Riverside.

The course website providing links to the course materials is here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

An Introduction to Solving Biological Problems with R Tue 11 Jun 2019   09:30 Finished

Please note that this course has been discontinued and has been replaced by the Introduction to R for biologists.

R is a highly-regarded, free, software environment for statistical analysis, with many useful features that promote and facilitate reproducible research.

In this course, we give an introduction to the R environment and explain how it can be used to import, manipulate and analyse tabular data. After the course you should feel confident to start exploring your own dataset using the materials and references provided.

The course website providing links to the course materials is here.

Please note that although we will demonstrate how to perform statistical analysis in R, we will not cover the theory of statistical analysis in this course. Those seeking an in-depth explanation of how to perform and interpret statistical tests are advised to see the list of Related courses. Moreover, those with some programming experience in other languages (e.g. Python, Perl) might wish to attend the follow-on Data Analysis and Visualisation in R course.

This event is supported by the BBSRC Strategic Training Awards for Research Skills (STARS) grant (BB/P022766/1).

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Bacterial Genome Assembly and Annotation in Galaxy new Thu 8 Jun 2017   09:30 Finished

The workshop will cover the basics of de novo genome assembly using a small genome example. This includes project planning steps, selecting fragment sizes, initial assembly of reads into fully covered contigs, and then assembling those contigs into larger scaffolds that may include gaps. The end result will be a set of contigs and scaffolds with sufficient average length to perform further analysis on, including genome annotation (link to that nomination). This workshop will use tools and methods targeted at small genomes. The basics of assembly and scaffolding presented here will be useful for building larger genomes, but the specific tools and much of the project planning will be different.

This workshop will also introduce genome annotation in the context of small genomes. We’ll begin with genome annotation concepts, and then introduce resources and tools for automatically annotating small genomes. The workshop will finish with a review of options for further automatic and manual tuning of the annotation, and for maintaining it as new assemblies or information becomes available.

This session will include an introduction to the Galaxy platform.

This event is co-organized with EMBL-ABR and the Genomics Virtual Lab. Course materials can be found here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

Basic statistics and data handling Wed 28 Feb 2018   09:30 Finished

This three day course is intended to open doors to applying statistics - whether directly increasing skills and personally undertaking analyses, or by expanding knowledge towards identifying collaborators. The end goal is to drive confident engagement with data analysis and further training - increasing the quality and reliability of interpretation, and putting that interpretation and subsequent presentation into the hands of the researcher. Each day of the course will deliver a mixture of lectures, workshops and hands-on practicals – and will focus on the following specific elements.

Day 1 focuses on basic approaches and the computer skills required to do downstream analysis. Covering: Basic skills for data manipulation in R. How to prepare your data effectively. Principles of experimental design and how this influences analysis.

On day 2, participants will explore the core concepts of statistics – so that they can begin to see how they can be applied to their own work, and to also help with better critical evaluation of the work of others. Covering: Basic statistics concepts and practice: power, variability, false discovery, t-test, effect size, simulations to understand what a p-value means.

On day 3 we will continue to explore core concepts of statistics, focusing on linear regression and multiple testing correction.

Course materials are available here.

This event is supported by the BBSRC Strategic Training Awards for Research Skills (STARS) grant (BB/P022766/1).

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

Big Data and Cloud Computing new Fri 1 Jun 2018   09:30 Finished

Recent advances in genomics, proteomics, imaging and other technologies, have resulted in data being generated at a faster rate than they can be meaningfully analysed. In this course we will show you how cloud computing can be used to meet the challenges of storage, management and analysis of big data. The first half of the course will introduce cloud infrastructure technologies. The second half will cover tools for collaborative working, resource management, and creation of workflows. The instructors will demonstrate how they are using cloud computing in their own research.

N.B. If you sign up for this course, you will be automatically registered for an AWS educate account, which will provide you with sufficient AWS credits to complete the course exercises. If you decide to continue using cloud computing after the course, you will need to either purchase more credits or apply for a grant from programs like: AWS Cloud Credits for Research, Microsoft Azure for Research or Google Cloud Platform Education Grants.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

In this course we will introduce web-based, open source tools to analyse and interpret high-throughput biological data.

The main focus will be g:Profiler - a toolset for finding most significant functional groups for a given gene or protein list; MEM - a query engine allowing to mine hundreds of public gene expression datasets to find most co-expressed genes based on a query gene; and ClustVis - a web tool for visualizing clustering of multivariate data using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) plot and heatmap.

MEM and g:Profiler are ELIXIR-Estonia node services.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

Bioinformatics for Principal Investigators Mon 16 Sep 2019   09:30 Finished

The aim of this workshop is to provide principal investigators with an introduction to the challenges of working with biological data and to the best practices, and tools, needed to perform bioinformatics research effectively and reproducibly.

On day 1, we will cover the importance of experimental design, discuss the challenges associated with (i) the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data (utilising RNA-seq as a working example) and (ii) the application of machine learning algorithms, as well as issues relating to reusability and reproducibility.

On day 2, we will put into practice concepts from day 1, running a RNA-seq data analysis pipeline, going from raw reads through differential expression analysis and the interpretation of downstream analysis results. Challenges encountered at each step of the analytical pipeline will be discussed. Please note that day 2 is optional.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

PLEASE NOTE The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching as many courses live online. We aim to simulate the classroom experience as closely as possible, with opportunities for one-to-one discussion with tutors and a focus on interactivity throughout.

InterMine is a freely available open-source data warehouse built specifically for the integration and analysis of complex biological data sets.

InterMine-based data analysis platforms are available for many organisms including mouse, rat, budding yeast, plants (over 87 plant genomes), nematodes, fly, zebrafish, Hymenoptera, Planaria, and more recently human.

Genomic and proteomic data within InterMine databases includes pathways, gene expression, interactions, sequence variants, GWAS, regulatory data and protein expression. InterMine provides sophisticated query and visualisation tools both through a web interface and a powerful web service API, with multiple language bindings including Python and R.

This course will focus on programmatic access to InterMine through the API and InterMine searches will be done using Python and R scripts. The exercises will mainly use the fly, human and mouse databases, but the course is applicable to anyone working with data for which an InterMine database is available (a comprehensive list of InterMine databases is available here.

This event is organised alongside a half day course on Biological data analysis using the InterMine User Interface. More information on this event are available here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

PLEASE NOTE The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching as many courses live online. We aim to simulate the classroom experience as closely as possible, with opportunities for one-to-one discussion with tutors and a focus on interactivity throughout.

InterMine is a freely available open-source data warehouse built specifically for the integration and analysis of complex biological data.

InterMine-based data analysis platforms are available for many organisms including mouse, rat, budding yeast, plants (over 87 plant genomes), nematodes, fly, zebrafishHymenoptera, Planaria, and more recently human.

Genomic and proteomic data within InterMine databases includes pathways, gene expression, interactions, sequence variants, GWAS, regulatory data and protein expression. InterMine provides sophisticated query and visualisation tools both through a web interface and a powerful web service API, with multiple language bindings including Python and R.

This course will focus on the InterMine web interface and will introduce participants to all aspects of the user interface, starting with some simple exercises and building up to more complex analysis encompassing several analysis tools and comparative analysis across organisms. The exercises will mainly use the fly, human and mouse databases, but the course is applicable to anyone working with data for which an InterMine database is available (a comprehensive list of InterMine databases is available here.)

This event is organised alongside a half day course on Biological data analysis using the InterMine API. More information on this event is available here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

The Open Microscopy Environment (OME) is an open-source software project that develops tools that enable access, analysis, visualization, sharing and publication of biological image data.

OME has three components:

  • OME-TIFF, standardised file format and data model;
  • Bio-Formats, a software library for reading proprietary image file formats; and
  • OMERO, a software platform for image data management and analysis.

In this one day course, we will present the OMERO platform, and show how Facility Managers can use it to manage users, groups, and their microscopy, HCS and digital pathology data.

Help pages on 'Using OMERO for Facility Managers' can be found here.

This course is organized alongside a one day course on Biological Imaging Data Management for Life Scientists. More information on this event are available here.

This course will be delivered by members of the OMERO team. The OME project is supported by BBSRC and Wellcome Trust.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

The Open Microscopy Environment (OME) is an open-source software project that develops tools that enable access, analysis, visualization, sharing and publication of biological image data.

OME has three components:

  • OME-TIFF, standardised file format and data model;
  • Bio-Formats, a software library for reading proprietary image file formats; and
  • OMERO, a software platform for image data management and analysis.

In this one day course, we will present the OMERO platform, and show how to import, organise, view, search, annotate and publish imaging data. Additionally, we will briefly introduce how to use a variety of processing tools with OMERO.

This course is organized alongside a one day course on Biological Imaging Data Processing for Data Scientists. More information on this event are available here.

This course will be delivered by members of the OMERO team. The OME project is supported by BBSRC and Wellcome Trust.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

The Open Microscopy Environment (OME) is an open-source software project that develops tools that enable access, analysis, visualization, sharing and publication of biological image data.

OME has three components:

  • OME-TIFF, standardised file format and data model;
  • Bio-Formats, a software library for reading proprietary image file formats; and
  • OMERO, a software platform for image data management and analysis.

In this one day course, we will present the OMERO platform, and show how to transition from manual data processing to automated processing workflows. We will introduce how to write applications against the OMERO API, how to integrate a variety of processing tools with OMERO and how to automatically generate output ready for publication.

This course is organized alongside a one day course on Biological Imaging Data Management for Life Scientists. More information on this event are available here.

This course will be delivered by members of the OMERO team. The OME project is supported by BBSRC and Wellcome Trust.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

High-throughput data analyses usually involve many data processing steps, including the use of a range of command line tools and scripts to transform, filter, aggregate and visualise data. Each tool may require a specific set of inputs and options to be defined and, as we chain multiple tools together, this can become challenging to manage. As analyses pipelines become more complex and with the ever-increasing amounts of data being collected in research, reproducible and scalable automatic workflow management becomes increasingly important.

The Snakemake workflow management system is a tool to create reproducible and scalable data analyses pipelines/workflows. Workflows are described via a human-readable, Python-based language. They can be seamlessly scaled to server, cluster, grid and cloud environments, without the need to modify the workflow definition. Finally, Snakemake workflows can entail a description of the required software, which will be automatically deployed to any execution environment.

With over 500k downloads on Bioconda, and over 2k citations, Snakemake is a widely used and accepted standard for reproducible data science that has powered numerous research goals and publications.

This 1-day workshop will cover the principles for building workflows using Snakemake, as well as more advanced strategies to fully customise, automate and scale your analysis.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

PLEASE NOTE The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching many courses live online, with tutors available to help you work through the course material on a personal copy of the course environment. We continue to monitor advice from the UK government and the University of Cambridge on resuming in-person teaching back in the training room.

Complex natural systems permeate many aspects of everyday life—including human intelligence, social media, biomedicine, agriculture, economics, even our personal and professional relationships. The past decade has seen intensification of research into structural and dynamical properties of complex networks. This course will introduce the basic principles of network theory, and hands-on DIY Network analysis using Cytoscape, one of the most widely used global platforms for construction and analysis of biomolecular networks such as gene regulatory interactions, protein complexes, hydrogen-bonding meshwork in active sites and neuronal networks. The aim is to conceptualize your own textual, tabular or genomic datasets as networks, and to understand how simple topological features can help to decipher complex properties of systems and processes.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Core Statistics Mon 9 Nov 2020   10:00 Finished

PLEASE NOTE that this course will be taught live online, with demonstrators available to help you throughout if have any questions. All lecture components will be recorded and uploaded to the course Moodle page so that you will be able to access that information even if technical or time zone restrictions means that you aren't able to join us for the live sessions.

This virtually delivered course is intended to provide a strong foundation in practical statistics and data analysis using the R or Python software environments. The underlying philosophy of the course is to treat statistics as a practical skill rather than as a theoretical subject and as such the course focuses on methods for addressing real-life issues in the biological sciences.

There are three core goals for this course:

  1. Use R or Python confidently for statistics and data analysis
  2. Be able to analyse datasets using standard statistical techniques
  3. Know which tests are and are not appropriate

Both R and Python are free software environments that are suitable for statistical and data analysis.

In this course, we explore classical statistical analysis techniques starting with simple hypothesis testing and building up to linear models and power analyses. The focus of the course is on practical implementation of these techniques and developing robust statistical analysis skills rather than on the underlying statistical theory.

After the course you should feel confident to be able to select and implement common statistical techniques using R or Python and moreover know when, and when not, to apply these techniques.

Core Statistics using R (IN-PERSON) Mon 13 May 2024   09:30   [More dates...] [Places]

This award winning course is intended to provide a strong foundation in practical statistics and data analysis using the R software environment. The underlying philosophy of the course is to treat statistics as a practical skill rather than as a theoretical subject and as such the course focuses on methods for addressing real-life issues in the biological sciences.

There are three core goals for this course:

  1. Use R confidently for statistics and data analysis
  2. Be able to analyse datasets using standard statistical techniques
  3. Know which tests are and are not appropriate

R is an open source programming language so all of the software we will use in the course is free.

In this course, we explore classical statistical analysis techniques starting with simple hypothesis testing and building up to linear models and power analyses. The focus of the course is on practical implementation of these techniques and developing robust statistical analysis skills rather than on the underlying statistical theory.

After the course you should feel confident to be able to select and implement common statistical techniques using R and moreover know when, and when not, to apply these techniques.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
  • Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.

1 other event...

Date Availability
Wed 10 Jul 2024 09:30 Not bookable
Core Statistics using R (ONLINE LIVE TRAINING) Wed 8 Sep 2021   14:00 Finished

The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching this course live online, with tutors available to help you throughout if have any questions. We continue to monitor advice from the UK government and the University of Cambridge on resuming in-person teaching in our training room.

This award winning virtually delivered course is intended to provide a strong foundation in practical statistics and data analysis using the R software environment. The underlying philosophy of the course is to treat statistics as a practical skill rather than as a theoretical subject and as such the course focuses on methods for addressing real-life issues in the biological sciences.

There are three core goals for this course:

  1. Use R confidently for statistics and data analysis
  2. Be able to analyse datasets using standard statistical techniques
  3. Know which tests are and are not appropriate

R is an open source programming language so all of the software we will use in the course is free.

In this course, we explore classical statistical analysis techniques starting with simple hypothesis testing and building up to linear models and power analyses. The focus of the course is on practical implementation of these techniques and developing robust statistical analysis skills rather than on the underlying statistical theory.

After the course you should feel confident to be able to select and implement common statistical techniques using R and moreover know when, and when not, to apply these techniques.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

COSMIC, the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer, is the world’s largest and most comprehensive expert manually curated resource for exploring the impact of somatic mutations in human cancer. Based at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and available publicly at https://cancer.sanger.ac.uk/cosmic, the latest release includes almost 6 million coding mutations across 1.4 million samples from over 26,000 papers. COSMIC captures the full spectrum of genomic data relating to somatic mutations, so in addition to coding mutations, gene fusions, non-coding mutations, copy-number variants, methylation and drug resistance mutations are included.

This course will use the live COSMIC website and tools to show you how to access and explore this information, seeking to identify genetic causes and targets in all human cancers.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

CRUK: Advanced Image Analysis with Fiji new Tue 10 Dec 2019   09:00 Finished

Fiji/ImageJ is a popular open-source image analysis software application. This course will build on top of the Fiji basic course, to continue explore advanced image processing: segmentation, tracking, and with a specific focus on scripting/programming using Fiji scripting environment. We will use python programming language, and aim to give a tutorial on both image processing and python programming.

This course is run by the CRUK CI Light microscopy core facility.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

CRUK: Analysis of publicly available microarray data Mon 20 Feb 2017   09:30 Finished

Although microarrays have been superseded by high-throughput sequencing technologies for gene expression profiling, years of experience gained from analysing microarray data has led to a variety of analysis techniques and datasets that can be exploited in other contexts. In this course, we will focus on retrieving and exploring microarray data from public repositories such as Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO).

Course materials can be found here.

This event is part of a series of training courses organized in collaboration with Dr. Mark Dunning at CRUK Cambridge Institute.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

CRUK: Beginners guide to version control with git Wed 2 Nov 2016   13:30 Finished

Version control is the management of changes to documents, computer programs, and other collections of information. Changes are usually identified by a number named the "revision number". Each revision is associated with a timestamp and the person making the change. Revisions can be compared, restored, and with some types of files, merged.

Version control systems like subversion (svn) and git are frequently used for groups writing software and code, but can be used for any kind of files or projects. Many people share their git repositories on GitHub.

This course will provide an introduction to git and how you can use github to share your projects, or for your own private use if you wish.

Course materials can be found here.

This event is part of a series of training courses organized in collaboration with Dr. Mark Dunning at CRUK Cambridge Institute.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

This course will provide participants with an introduction to EMBL-EBI and its data tools and resources, which cover the whole spectrum of biological / life sciences.

Sessions with trainers from ArrayExpress, Expression Atlas and the GWAS catalog will explore SNP-trait associations and show how further understanding can be gained on the location and level of gene expression across the body.

This event is part of a series of training courses organized in collaboration with Dr. Mark Dunning at CRUK Cambridge Institute.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

CRUK: Data Carpentry in R Wed 11 Mar 2020   09:30 Finished

In many domains of research the rapid generation of large amounts of data is fundamentally changing how research is done. The deluge of data presents great opportunities, but also many challenges in managing, analyzing and sharing data.

Data Carpentry workshops are designed to teach basic concepts, skills and tools for working more effectively with data, using a combination of tools with a main focus in R. The workshop is aimed at researchers in the life sciences at all career stages and is designed for learners with little to no prior knowledge of programming, shell scripting, or command line tools.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

CRUK: Image Analysis with Cellprofiler new Mon 2 Jul 2018   12:30 Finished

CellProfiler is a free, open-source image analysis software designed to enable biologists without training in computer vision or programming to quantitatively measure phenotypes from thousands of images automatically.

This course will introduce you the basic usage, and several application examples to help you understand and build up image processing and analysis workflows within CellProfiler. It will also cover a brief introduction to the usage of its companion package CellProfiler Analyst, which allows interactive exploration and analysis of image data. Some related theoretical topics in image processing will also be covered.

This course is run by the CRUK CI Light microscopy core facility.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

CRUK: Image Analysis with Fiji Mon 23 Mar 2020   12:30 Finished

Fiji/ImageJ is a popular open-source image analysis software application. This course will briefly cover introductory aspects of image processing and analysis theory, but will focus on practical sessions where participants will gain hands on experience with Fiji.

This course is run by the CRUK CI Light microscopy core facility.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

CRUK: Introduction to CRUK High Performance Computing Tue 26 Nov 2019   09:00 Finished

Using the Cambridge Institute's High Performance Computing Facilities, this brief (0.5 day) course will give you three things:

  • A refresher on Unix and an introduction to cluster computing, i.e. what High Performance Computing facilities re available to you at CI.
  • Basic instruction on using our scheduler (The scheduler allots slots of processing time to the jobs submitted by the multiplicity of users on the cluster).
  • Some performance hints for efficient use of the HPC

It won't make you an expert on parallel computing and H.P.C, but will let you get to work.

Note that a pre-requisite for this course is either existing familiarity with the Unix/Linux command-line or attendance of our Linux course CRUK: Introduction to Linux Command Line.

This course is run by the CRUK CI Bioinformatics and IT core.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

Galaxy is an open, web-based platform for data-intensive life science research that enables non-bioinformaticians to create, run, tune, and share their own bioinformatic analyses.

A Galaxy introduction course covering basic functions, simple data manipulation using use cases and examples and visualisation mostly targeted at first time users.

Further information is available from the course website.

This event is part of a series of training courses organised in collaboration with Dr. Mark Dunning at CRUK Cambridge Institute.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book by linking here.

This course provides a refresher on the foundations of statistical analysis. Practicals are conducted using the R commander package, which provides an accessible interface to the R statistical language.

This event is part of a series of training courses organized in collaboration with Dr. Mark Dunning at CRUK Cambridge Institute.

Modern genomics technologies are able to produce large volumes of data that often leave researchers feeling overwhelmed and unsure of how to begin the process of biological interpretation.

In this course, we explain the common file formats generated by sequencing technologies and how they can be manipulated and explored by non-bioinformaticians. The tool that we will use is the Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV).

If time allows, there will be time at the end of the session for you to explore your own datasets with the assistance of the instructors.

This event is part of a series of training courses organized in collaboration with Dr. Mark Dunning at CRUK Cambridge Institute. The materials for the course were developed in collaboration with Dr. Thomas Carroll from the MRC CSC.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book by linking here.

This course has the following objectives:

  • To provide an overview on the importance of microscopy image analysis and tools in Arivis Vision4D software for the quantification of various biological problems: cell analysis, time-lapse, colocalization, stitching, handle large images etc
  • Practical session with computers during which participants will be introduced to image analysis and visualization using Vision4D
  • Demonstration on how virtual reality can help with image visualization and quantification

This course is run by the CRUK CI Light microscopy core facility.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

CRUK Summer School Mon 24 Jul 2017   09:30 Finished

CRUK Summer School

Event posted for Administration purposes only

CRUK: Using the Ensembl Genome Browser Mon 18 Apr 2016   09:30 Finished

The Ensembl Project provides a comprehensive and integrated source of annotation of, mainly vertebrate, genome sequences. This one-day workshop offers a comprehensive practical introduction to the use of the Ensembl genome browser as well as essential background information.

This course will focus on the vertebrate genomes in Ensembl, however much of what will be covered is also applicable to the non-vertebrates (plants, bacteria, fungi, metazoa and protists) in Ensembl Genomes.

There may be some tools and topics that do not apply to non-vertebrates; if you have any questions about this, please email the Ensembl Outreach Project Leader, Emily Perry.

This event is part of a series of training courses organized in collaboration with Dr. Mark Dunning at CRUK Cambridge Institute.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

Data Manipulation and Visualisation in R Mon 10 Jun 2019   09:30 Finished

Please note that this course has been discontinued and has been replaced by the Introduction to R for biologists.

This course introduces some relatively new additions to the R programming language: dplyr and ggplot2. In combination these R packages provide a powerful toolkit to make the process of manipulating and visualising data easy and intuitive.

Materials for this course can be found here.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

Data Science in Python (ONLINE LIVE TRAINING) Thu 8 Apr 2021   09:30 Finished

Please be aware that this course is currently being re-developed and will not be scheduled to run until redevelopment has been completed. If you are interested in being notified once the course is scheduled, please register your interest.

PLEASE NOTE The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching as many courses live online, with tutors available to help you work through the course material on a personal copy of the course environment. We aim to simulate the classroom experience as closely as possible, with opportunities for one-to-one discussion with tutors and a focus on interactivity throughout.

This course covers concepts and strategies for working more effectively with Python with the aim of writing reusable code, using function and libraries. Participants will acquire a working knowledge of key concepts which are prerequisites for advanced programming in Python e.g. writing modules and classes.

Note: this course is the continuation of the Introduction to Solving Biological Problems with Python; participants are expected to have attended the introductory Python course and/or have acquired some working knowledge of Python. This course is also open to Python beginners who are already fluent in other programming languages as this will help them to quickly get started in Python.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

THIS EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED!

PLEASE NOTE The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching as many courses live online, with tutors available to help you work through the course material on a personal copy of the course environment. We aim to simulate the classroom experience as closely as possible, with opportunities for one-to-one discussion with tutors and a focus on interactivity throughout.

This School aims to familiarise biomedical students and researchers with principles of Data Science. Focusing on utilising machine learning algorithms to handle biomedical data, it will cover: effects of experimental design, data readiness, pipeline implementations, machine learning in Python, and related statistics, as well as Gaussian Process models.

Providing practical experience in the implementation of machine learning methods relevant to biomedical applications, including Gaussian processes, we will illustrate best practices that should be adopted in order to enable reproducibility in any data science application.

This event is sponsored by Cambridge Centre for Data-Driven Discovery (C2D3).

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

This three day workshop will bring together representatives of the ELIXIR Galaxy Working Group, as well as trainers and developers working on the Galaxy project from Europe and beyond, to:

  • Build on an existing collection of Galaxy training materials. During the workshop we will collate additional materials, including topics relevant to the ELIXIR use-cases, and ensure that, for each workflow, a minimum set of training materials is available, including slides, practical exercises, Docker containers, and Galaxy tours.
  • Improve materials’ annotations (introducing full BioSchemas compliance) and align them with existing ELIXIR efforts (linking to TeSS). During the workshop materials will be curated to ensure they are properly described, according to the ELIXIR/GOBLET guidelines, and BioSchemas compliant.
  • Extend the existing “curated” dataset collection and assign DOI to individual datasets.
  • Increase the number of Docker/Virtual Machines available for easy installation of Galaxy training environments.
  • Explore the feasibility of developing a toolkit to facilitate plug in of different datasets in existing training material/workflows through a templating approach.

This event is supported by ELIXIR-EXCELERATE, an European Commission grant within the Research Infrastructures programme of Horizon 2020, grant agreement number 676559.

EMBL-EBI: An Introduction to Sequence Searching Fri 12 Apr 2019   09:00 Finished

This module introduces the area of sequence similarity searching and focuses on how to use tools like BLAST and PSI-Search to find homologous sequences in EMBL-EBI databases, including tips on which tool and database to use, input formats, how to change parameters and how to interpret the results pages.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

This workshop will introduce students to EMBL-EBI, the databases and services it offers, and basic concepts in bioinformatics that will be of use to their disease related research work.

It will explain the role of the EMBL-EBI in curating and sharing biological data with scientists around the world, and introduce concepts for locating relevant data and information of interest.

Sessions with trainers from Ensembl, ArrayExpress and the GWAS catalog will introduce practical skills in browsing genes and variation in a genomic context, in exploring SNP-trait associations and will show how further understanding can be gained on the location and level of gene expression across the body.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

EMBL-EBI: Bioinformatics resources for protein biology new Mon 29 Apr 2019   09:30 Finished

Are you aware of the wide range of protein data resources that can easily be accessed and explored to enhance your research? Do you want to know more about the sequence of your protein and its functions? Wondered whether a structure of your protein exists and how to explore it? Want to know more about the potential complexes and reaction pathways your protein of interest is involved in, giving you a better overview of its biological context?

This three day workshop will introduce you to data resources and tools developed by EMBL-EBI that can help you in your protein studies. Each day will focus on a particular protein topic, with the aim of helping you get more from your data and also to explore publically-available data that can further support your research.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by clicking here.

EMBL-EBI: Ensembl Variant Effect Predictor (VEP) new Thu 15 Feb 2018   13:30 Finished

This interactive workshop offers participants hands-on experience in the use of the Ensembl VEP to annotate genetic variants with the effects they have on Ensembl genes, and the known information about co-located variants. We will also look at known genes and variants, including the types of data available and where they come from.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

EMBL-EBI: European Variation Archive Thu 15 Feb 2018   09:30 CANCELLED

This interactive workshop offers participants hands-on experience in the use of the European Variation Archive, EVA. The EVA is an open-access, genetic variation data repository, currently hosting more than 80 studies describing in excess of 520 million unique variants. Participants will be shown how this data can be searched for at the study level via the EVA Study Browser, or at the individual variant level, via our Variant Browser. Finally, participants shall also be shown how to access this wealth of genetic variation data via the EVA API.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

EMBL-EBI: Interactions & Pathways Tue 13 Mar 2018   09:30 Finished

This workshop is aimed at giving life scientists training on how to explore and use protein interaction and pathway bioinformatics resources. This course looks at the data repositories, resources and tools available and shows attendees how to both find information on a single molecule and how to build high-quality networks to enable network analysis.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

This workshop will give an introduction to the protein interaction database IntAct and the Complex Portal service. You will also briefly learn how to visualise protein interactions using the Cytoscape application.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

EMBL-EBI: Interactions & Pathways - Reactome Tue 28 Feb 2017   09:00 Finished

This workshop will give an introduction to the Reactome pathway database website and analysis tools, using short presentations and practical hands-on exercises. The session will also explain where to learn more, get help, and how to become involved in adding more pathway information to Reactome.

Further information can be found here.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

EMBL-EBI: Introduction to Chemogenomics Resources Mon 6 Feb 2017   09:30 Finished

An introduction to the chemogenomics resources available from the EBI. The workshop will cover resources such as ChEMBL, SureChEMBL, UniChem and Open Targets.

This session is one of a series of short introductions to EBI Services, run together, but bookable separately (see Related Courses section below).

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

EMBL-EBI: Introduction to EMBL-EBI resources Mon 23 Jan 2017   09:30 Finished

This workshop is an introduction to EMBL-EBI and the life science data resources it provides. Participants will be shown how to navigate the website and search for appropriate database resources and tools, whilst also highlighting resources such as Train online (our e-learning portal) and the literature resources at Europe PMC.

This workshop will not focus on a set of specific resources; for more focused workshops please see the others within this series (see the Related Courses section below)

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

EMBL-EBI: Introduction to Interpro new Tue 27 Feb 2018   09:00 Finished

Employ InterPro to help you answer your research questions!

This workshop will help you find out why there is a need to automatically annotate proteins, how protein family databases can help meet this challenge, and how InterPro pulls together a number of such databases, allowing you to classify unknown protein sequences and identify their function. The module is a combination of presentations and hands-on practical exercises. You will explore the various features of an InterPro entry, and design a workflow to utilise InterPro in the analysis of real world data.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

The European Nucleotide Sequence Archive (ENA) is a global database for storing experimental nucleotide data and also interpreted data (alignment files, variant calling, analysis results). ENA is the database where all raw and consensus viral sequence data should be deposited, including SARS-Cov-2 data. The data is submitted by scientists conducting sequencing experiments and publishing research in the area. Data is fully searchable and available for download. Sequence data includes raw NGS files (FastQ, BAM…), assembled genomes and transcriptomes, and annotated sequences (protein coding genes, non coding RNA, barcode genes, HLA genes).

This training is aimed at a wide range of users that need to retrieve data from ENA, either occasionally or on a regular basis, or those users who will have retrieval needs closer to the course time.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

This course provides an introduction to the basic theory and concepts of network analysis. Attendees will learn how to construct protein-protein interaction networks and subsequently use these to overlay large-scale data such as that obtained through RNA-Seq or mass-spec proteomics. The course will focus on giving attendees hands-on experience in the use of one of the most commonly used open source Network Visualisation Platforms, Cytoscape. The course will also access and analyse the data through Cytoscape apps, including IntAct app.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.

This course will give an introduction to the basic concepts of ontologies and how they are useful in biological applications. We will explain what a biomedical ontology is and present the two primary types of ontology: (i) domain ontology and (ii) application ontology, using examples as Gene Ontology (GO) and Experimental Factor Ontology (EFO). The module will also go into details of why big data need ontologies and the ontology capabilities in advanced computational biology.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

EMBL-EBI: Protein Sequence Databases with UniProt Mon 5 Feb 2018   09:30 Finished

This workshop aims to give the scientific community hands on experience on how to access and effectively use protein data in UniProt. UniProt is a high-quality, comprehensively and thoroughly annotated protein resource. Participants will be able to access detailed information on protein function and millions of protein sequences in the UniProt knowledgebase, including isoforms and disease variants.

Also note: This event is part of a series of short introductions focusing on EMBL-EBI resources. If you want to learn more about these separate training events, see the Related Courses section below.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

PLEASE NOTE The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching as many courses live online. We aim to simulate the classroom experience as closely as possible, with opportunities for one-to-one discussion with tutors and a focus on interactivity throughout.

This workshop is designed for researchers interested in learning about functional genomics data, how to access, retrieve and use the data from ArrayExpress and hands-on experience in using Expression Atlas, a resource to find information about gene and protein expression across species and biological conditions such as different tissues, cell types, developmental stages and diseases among others. This will include an overview on how gene expression data is curated and analysed in Expression Atlas and a practical activity to demonstrate how to access and visualise gene expression analysis results. These activities should help you answer questions such as "where is my favourite gene expressed?" or "how does its expression change in a disease?".

This workshop is not going to be a session on how to run your own bioinformatics analysis but to use the tools that have been developed in order to be able to take advantage of others’ work and prepare your work to be reproducible.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Ensembl REST API workshop (ONLINE LIVE TRAINING) Wed 22 Nov 2023   09:30 Finished

The Ensembl project provides an interface and an infrastructure for accessing genomic information, including genes, variants, comparative genomics and gene regulation data, covering over 300 vertebrate species.

This workshop is aimed at researchers and developers interested in exploring Ensembl beyond the website. The workshop covers how to use the Ensembl REST APIs, including understanding the major endpoints and how to write scripts to call them.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.

What are the cognitive differences between novices, competent practitioners, and experts? Do different people really have different learning styles? Do flipped classrooms actually work better than regular lectures? This tutorial will explore recent research in these areas and more, and show participants how to apply that research in the classroom to improve teaching.

This tutorial is a condensed version of the instructor training program that Software Carpentry has been running for the past three years. In it, we will explore a handful of research results in educational psychology, and see how to use those findings to build more effective lessons.

Greg Wilson is the Executive Director of the Software Carpentry Foundation, a volunteer non-profit organization that teaches researchers basic lab skills for scientific computing.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

This event will consist of two parts. The first part of the workshop aims to provide new trainers with guidance and tips for developing and delivering training in bioinformatics, exploring a range of methods appropriate to different learning styles and examining the requirements for a successful course (both scientific and logistic). It will be based on the EXCELERATE Train-the-Trainer (TtT) course materials and content will be tailored to trainers that are involved in teaching bioinformatics to clinical audiences.

The second part of the workshop will focus on "Best practices in clinical bioinformatics training", providing an opportunity for people already involved in this kind of training, or in the process of developing it, to come together and exchange best practice/experiences. Participants will include training providers of the Health Education England’s MSc in Genomics Medicine from several UK Universities as well as other providers active in this area, from around Europe and beyond.

This event is co-sponsored by ELIXIR-EXCELERATE and Health Education England (HEE).

This one-day course is primarily aimed at life science researchers, but covers many topics that are applicable to other fields. It combines key theoretical knowledge with practical application, which will aid researchers in designing effective experiments. The focus throughout the course is to link experimental design to a clear analysis strategy. This ensures that the collected data will be suitable for statistical analysis. During this course, we cover:

  • Practices in experimental design that lead to high quality research
  • Common design pitfalls, and how to avoid or mitigate them
  • A brief introduction to more advanced analysis techniques for experiments with unusual or complex designs

Topics included in the course include: crafting a good research question, operationalising variables effectively, identifying and dealing with confounding variables and pseudoreplication, and practical tips for power analysis and piloting.

The course is delivered via a mix of lectures, group discussion and worked examples.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
Experimental Design (ONLINE LIVE TRAINING) Tue 17 Jan 2023   09:45 Finished

Modern technologies are able to deliver an unprecedented amount of data rapidly. However, without due care and attention early in the experimental process, such data are meaningless if they cannot adequately answer the intended research question. This course is aimed at those planning high-throughput experiments and highlights the kinds of questions they should be asking themselves. The course consists of a lecture and small-group discussions led by a member of the Genomics or Bioinformatics Cores.

This event is part of a series of training courses organized in collaboration with the Bioinformatics Core Facility at CRUK Cambridge Institute.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Many experimental designs end up producing lists of hits, usually based around genes or transcripts. Sometimes these lists are small enough that they can be examined individually, but often it is useful to do a more structured functional analysis to try to automatically determine any interesting biological themes which turn up in the lists.

This course looks at the various software packages, databases and statistical methods which may be of use in performing such an analysis. As well as being a practical guide to performing these types of analysis the course will also look at the types of artefacts and bias which can lead to false conclusions about functionality and will look at the appropriate ways to both run the analysis and present the results for publication.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
  • Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.
Finding and accessing human genome data new Mon 13 Mar 2017   09:30 Finished

Researchers rely on acquiring external data to validate, benchmark and supplement research findings. Funders require researchers to make their datasets accessible for further reuse.

The goal of this workshop is to bring to the fore existing challenges with genomic data access and reuse. We will introduce a number of tools and resources to simplify #dataaccess and #datasharing.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

This 2-days workshop will bring together bioimage analysts, trainers and developers from NEUBIAS, EuroBioImaging and Global BioImaging, as well as ELIXIR’s Bioschemas and TeSS developers, and anyone willing to contribute, to foster new collaborations between ELIXIR and key initiatives from the image analysis community, to:

  • Build a collection of curated image analysis training materials. Many materials are currently available online for several topics but no consistent curation has been applied to them to make them easily discoverable. During the workshop we will collate materials and ensure that, for each image analysis workflow, a minimum set of training materials is available, including slides, practical exercises, Docker container, etc.
  • Improve materials’ annotations (introducing full BioSchemas compliance) and align them with existing ELIXIR efforts (linking to TeSS). During the workshop, materials will be curated to ensure that they are properly described, according to the existing ELIXIR guidelines, and BioSchemas compliant. Consequently the curation will enable materials, hosted by individual providers, to be discoverable via TeSS.
  • Increase the number of Docker/Virtual Machines (VMs) available for easy installation of image analysis training environments. We will focus on: (i) specific pipelines for which containers currently do not exist, (ii) workflows that are of interest to the NEUBIAS/GBI communities and (iii) for which expertise will be available among the workshop participants. This would be incredibly helpful for running future image analysis courses, including the next GBI course planned for October 2018, as it would increase portability of training environments, reducing the burden of lengthy, and often troublesome, software installations.
Generalised linear models (IN-PERSON) Fri 7 Jun 2024   09:30 [Places]

Generalised linear models are the kind of models we would use if we had to deal with non-continuous response variables. For example, this happens if you have count data or a binary outcome.

This course aims to introduce generalised linear models, using the R software environment. Similar to Core statistics using R this course addresses the practical aspects of using these models, so you can explore real-life issues in the biological sciences. The Generalised linear models using R course builds heavily on the knowledge gained in the core statistics sessions, which means that the Core statistics using R course is a firm prerequisite for joining.

There are several aims to this course:

1. Be able to distinguish between linear models and generalised linear models

2. Analyse binary outcome and count data using R

3. Critically assess model fit

R is an open-source programming language so all of the software we will use in the course is free. We will be using the R Studio interface throughout the course. Most of the code will be focussed around the tidyverse and tidymodels packages, so a basic understanding of the tidyverse syntax is essential.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training might take place at the Craik-Marshall training room. This is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access. Please put level access requirements in the "Special requirements" section, so we can take that into consideration when allocating the room.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
  • Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.
Genome Annotation with Artemis Thu 28 May 2015   09:30 Finished

This one day workshop aims to give an introduction to Artemis and ACT (Artemis Comparison Tool). Both tools enable the visualization, analysis and comparison of genome data. They are freely available for all operating systems and can be downloaded here. This is a hands-on course with short talks introducing the tools. The course is taught by members of the Pathogen and Parasite Genomic Teams from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Further information is available here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book by linking here.

High Performance Computing: An Introduction (IN-PERSON) Mon 8 Jul 2024   09:30 Not bookable

Have you heard about High Performance Computing, but are not sure what it is or whether it is relevant for your work? Would you like to use a HPC, but are not sure where to start? Are you using your personal computer to run computationally demanding tasks, which take long and slow down your work? Do you need to use software that runs on Linux, but don't have access to a Linux computer? If any of these questions apply to you, then this course might be for you!

Knowing how to work on a High Performance Computing system is an essential skill for applications such as bioinformatics, big-data analysis, image processing, machine learning, parallelising tasks, and other high-throughput applications.

In this course we will cover the basics of High Performance Computing, what it is and how you can use it in practice. This is a hands-on workshop, which should be accessible to researchers from a range of backgrounds and offering several opportunities to practice the skills we learn along the way.

As an optional session for those interested, we will also introduce the (free) HPC facilities available at Cambridge University (the course is not otherwise Cambridge-specific).


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
  • Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.
IAFIG-RMS: Bioimage analysis with Python new charged Mon 9 Dec 2019   09:30 Finished

THIS EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED!

The aim of this 5 days course is to develop motivated participants toward becoming independent BioImage Analysts in an imaging facility or research role. Participants will be taught theory and algorithms relating to bioimage analysis using Python as the primary coding language.

Lectures will focus on image analysis theory and applications. Topics to be covered include: Image Analysis and image processing, Python and Jupyter notebooks, Visualisation, Fiji to Python, Segmentation, Omero and Python, Image Registration, Colocalisation, Time-series analysis, Tracking, Machine Learning, and Applied Machine Learning.

The bulk of the practical work will focus on Python and how to code algorithms and handle data using Python. Fiji will be used as a tool to facilitate image analysis. Omero will be described and used for some interactive coding challenges.

Research spotlight talks will demonstrate research of instructors/scientists using taught techniques in the wild.

This event is organized in collaboration with the Image Analysis Focused Interest Group and is sponsored by the Royal Microscopical Society.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

One of the most important tasks of systems biology is to create explanatory and predictive models of complex biological systems. Availability of gene expression data in different conditions has paved the way for reconstructing direct or indirect regulatory connections between various genes and gene products. Most often, we are not interested in single interactions between gene products; instead, we try to reconstruct networks that provide insights into the investigated biological processes or the entire system as a whole.

This webinar will expand upon the concept of Gene Co-expression Networks to elucidate Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA), and introduce the importance of visualising clustered gene expression profiles as single ‘Eigengenes’. It will describe the complete protocol for WGCNA analysis starting from normalised Gene Expression Datasets (Microarrays or RNA-Seq). This will be followed by a discussion on methods of extraction and analysis of consensus modules and Network motifs from Gene Co-Expression Networks and Transcriptional Regulatory Networks.

The webinar will be presented in the form of a lecture and tutorial with screenshots that enable listeners to emulate the protocols in R. Note that this is a webinar and not a coding exercise. Links to further reading and practice will be shared.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Image Analysis for Biologists Mon 11 Dec 2017   09:30 Finished

This course will focus on computational methods for analysing cellular images and extracting quantitative data from them. The aim of this course is to familiarise the participants with computational image analysis methodologies, and to provide hands-on training in running quantitative analysis pipelines.

On day 1 we will introduce principles of image processing and analysis, giving an overview of commonly used algorithms through a series of talks and practicals based on Fiji, an extensible open source software package.

On day 2, we will cover time series processing and cell tracking using TrackMate. The afternoon of day two will focus on understanding the basics of deconvolution and colocalisation, using tools in Fiji to look at basic examples of how to apply deconvolution and how to carry out colocalisation analysis in fluorescence microscopy.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Image Analysis for Biologists Mon 24 Jun 2019   09:30 Finished

This course will focus on computational methods for analysing cellular images and extracting quantitative data from them. The aim of this course is to familiarise the participants with computational image analysis methodologies, and to provide hands-on training in running quantitative analysis pipelines.

On day 1 we will introduce principles of image processing and analysis, giving an overview of commonly used algorithms through a series of talks and practicals based on Fiji, an extensible open source software package.

On day 2, we will cover time series processing and cell tracking using TrackMate and advanced image segmentation using Ilastik. Additionally, in the afternoon we will run a study design and data clinic (sign up will be required) for participants that wish to discuss their experiments.

On day 3, we will describe the open Icy platform developed at the Institut Pasteur. Icy is a next-generation, user-friendly software offering powerful acquisition, visualisation, annotation and analysis algorithms for 5D bioimaging data, together with unique automation/scripting capabilities (notably via its graphical programming interface) and tight integration with existing software (e.g. ImageJ, Matlab, Micro-Manager).

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Image Processing and Visualisation with LithoGraphX new Thu 4 Aug 2016   10:00 Finished

LithoGraphX is a software to visualize, process and analyse 3D images and meshes.

On the first day of this course, we will demonstrate how to use LithoGraphX to visualize, clean and process 2D and 3D images. We will cover: (i) how to extract cell shape from 2D or 3D images by marking the cell wall or membrane, (ii) how to extract key morphological features and (iii) how to use these features to build a cell classifier. The first day is intended for biologists and computer scientists interested in using LithoGraphX.

On the second day, we will see how to write and distribute extensions to LithoGraphX. To this purpose, we will learn more about the internals of LithoGraphX and its API both in C++ and Python. The second day is intended for computer scientists wanting either to write their own algorithm or automate complex protocols.

Participants can choose to register for both days or for individual days, depending on their interest and background knowledge.

The timetable for this event can be found here.

This course is organized in collaboration with Dr Susana Sauret-Gueto from the OpenPlant Lab of the Department of Plant Sciences of the University of Cambridge.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

One of the most important tasks of systems biology is to create explanatory and predictive models of complex biological systems. Availability of gene expression data in different conditions has paved the way for reconstructing direct or indirect regulatory connections between various genes and gene products. Most often, we are not interested in single interactions between gene products; instead, we try to reconstruct networks that provide insights into the investigated biological processes.

This webinar will introduce the importance and applications of Gene Expression Datasets (Microarrays and RNA-Seq), followed by methods of extraction and analysis of Co-Expression Networks and Transcriptional Regulatory Networks from these datasets. The webinar will focus on the pros and cons of Weighted and Unweighted Networks, citing examples to aid decisions about which networks to use and when.

The webinar will be presented in the form of a lecture and tutorial with screenshots that enable listeners to emulate the protocols in R. Note that this is a webinar and not a coding exercise. Links to further reading and practice will be shared.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

The vast majority of data produced fits the criteria of labelled data (with either continuous of categorical labels); the machine learning task of discriminating classes (for categorical outputs) or predicting future values (continuous outputs) will be discussed in detail, focusing both on classical methods – k nearest neighbours, decision tree based methods and support vector machine – and on the importance and discriminative power of features.

The module will provide support in generating models (using R as programming environment), critically assessing the optimisation of hyperparameters and evaluating the usefulness of the model with respect to the initial question. The examples presented throughout stem from biological examples, yet the skills and critical assessment of outputs are transferrable.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
Interpreting the clinical genome with DECIPHER new Fri 8 Jul 2016   09:30 Finished

DECIPHER is a collaborative data sharing and interpretation platform that enables the secure upload, analysis and subsequent sharing of anonymised phenotype-linked patient variant data in rare genetic disorders.

DECIPHER is a worldwide user community of over 250 clinical genetics centres and research groups from over 40 countries that utilise the built-in tools for aiding the interpretation of variants as well as to discover other patients that share similar phenotype and genomic findings.

DECIPHER facilitates collaboration and exchange of information between a global community of clinical centers and researchers leading thereby accelerating discovery and diagnosis. Access to consented anonymised records is free to all users. User accounts are provided to bona-fide clinicians and lab scientists to enable deposition and sharing of anonymised patient data.

The purpose of this half-day workshop is to acquaint participants with the DECIPHER website and database and introduce the various built-in tools for visualisation and interpretation of phenotype-linked genomic variation in anonymised consented patient data. It is hoped that by the end of this workshop, users will be able to carry out effective searches of data, use the built-in genome browser to visualise variation in context of other pathogenic and reference data sources, find other patients with similar variants and shared phenotypes, and identify most likely causes of phenotypic presentation by gene prioritisation.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

Introduction to Bayesian Inference (IN-PERSON) new Fri 2 Feb 2024   09:30 Finished

This course is aimed to provide the tools to conduct Bayesian inference in common situations.

We will be contrasting Bayesian Inference with classical hypothesis testing, covering conjugate distributions and credible intervals. We will also look at modern computational methods such as MCMC approaches using the BUGS library.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
Introduction to Command Line Linux (Online) Mon 26 Apr 2021   13:00 Finished

PLEASE NOTE The Bioinformatics Team are presently teaching as many courses live online, with tutors available to help you work through the course material on a personal copy of the course environment. We aim to simulate the classroom experience as closely as possible, with opportunities for one-to-one discussion with tutors and a focus on interactivity throughout.

This short (0.5 day) intensive course serves to introduce you to the command-line interface in Linux.

It is based upon elements of the Software Carpentries Shell(novice) and Shell(extras) courses. It is recommended for those CI personnel planning on attending the CI High Performance Computing facilities (Cluster) course.

This course is run by the CRUK CI Bioinformatics and IT core.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

Day 1 will introduce you to next generation sequencing technologies (NGS) and how they work, providers, common bioinformatics workflows, standardised file types, quality control. This session will include an introduction to Galaxy. Galaxy is an open, web-based platform for data-intensive life science research that enables non-bioinformaticians to create, run, tune, and share their own bioinformatic analyses.

Day 2 will be hands-on practicals on using Galaxy to explore sequencing quality control, before and after removal of low quality samples. This forms the core of all NGS analyses and this day will conclude with how this data pipes into gene expression studies, variant calling and genome assemblies.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

Galaxy (http://galaxyproject.org/) is an open, web-based platform for data intensive life science research that enables non-bioinformaticians to create, run, tune, and share bioinformatic analyses. The goal of this course is to demonstrate how to use Galaxy to explore RNA-seq data, for expression profiling, and ChIP-seq data, to assess genomic DNA binding sites. You will learn how to perform analysis in Galaxy, and then how to share, repeat, and reproduce your analyses.

The timetable for this event can be found here.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book by linking here.

Introduction to genome variation analysis using NGS Thu 18 May 2017   09:30 Finished

This course provides an introduction to the analysis of human genome sequence variation with next generation sequencing data (NGS), including:

  • an introduction to genetic variation as well as data formats and analysis workflows commonly used in NGS data analysis;
  • an overview of available analytical tools and discussion of their limitations; and
  • hands-on experience with common computational workflows for analysing genome sequence variation using bioinformatics and computational genomics approaches.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

This course provides an introduction to high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data analysis methodologies. Lectures will give insight into how biological knowledge can be generated from RNA-seq, ChIP-seq and DNA-seq experiments and illustrate different ways of analyzing such data. Practicals will consist of computer exercises that will enable the participants to apply statistical methods to the analysis of RNA-seq, ChIP-seq and DNA-seq data under the guidance of the lecturers and teaching assistants. It is aimed at researchers who are applying or planning to apply HTS technologies and bioinformatics methods in their research.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

The course will cover ANOVA, linear regression and some extensions. It will be a mixture of lectures and hands-on time using RStudio to analyse data.

This event is part of a series of training courses organized in collaboration with the Bioinformatics Core Facility at CRUK Cambridge Institute.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to Book or register Interest by linking here.

Introduction to Metabolomics (IN-PERSON) Tue 18 Jun 2024   09:30 [Places]

The goal of metabolomics is to identify and quantify the complete biochemical composition of a biological sample. With the increase in genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic information there is a growing need to understand the metabolic phenotype that these genes and proteins ultimately control.

The aim of this course is to provide an introductory overview of metabolomics and its applications in life sciences and environmental settings. We will introduce different techniques used to extract metabolites and analyse samples to collect metabolomic data (such as HPLC or GC-based MS and NMR), present how to analyse such data, how to identify metabolites using online databases and how to map the metabolomic data to metabolic pathways.

As a follow-up of this course, we run an extra data clinic on 20 June AM, where you can get one-to-one support with your own data analysis and/or experimental design. This is exclusively available to participants on this course.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
  • Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.
Introduction to Metagenomics (IN-PERSON) Mon 6 Nov 2023   09:30 Finished

This workshop will focus on the theory and applications of metagenomics for the analysis of complex microbiomes (microbial communities). We will cover a range of methods from the fastest, simplest and cheapest amplicon-based methods up to Hi-C metagenomics techniques that give highly detailed results on complex microbial communities. In addition to the theory, we will introduce several bioinformatic software packages suited for the analysis of metagenomic data, quality control and downstream analysis and interpretation of the results.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
Introduction to Phylogenetics (IN-PERSON) Fri 24 May 2024   09:30 [Places]

This course will teach you how to use molecular data to construct and interpret phylogenies. We will start by introducing basic concepts in phylogenetic analysis, what trees represent and how to interpret them. We will then cover how to produce a multiple sequence alignment from DNA and protein sequences, and the pros and cons of different alignment algorithms. You will then learn about different methods of phylogenetic inference, with a particular focus on maximum likelihood and how to assess confidence in your tree using bootstrap resampling. Finally, we will introduce how Bayesian methods can help to estimate the uncertainty in the inferred tree parameters as well as incorporate information for more advanced/bespoke phylogenetic analysis.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • ♿ The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access.
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.
  • Guidance on visiting Cambridge and finding accommodation is available here.

This course provides a practical introduction to the writing of Python programs for the complete novice. Participants are lead through the core concepts of Python including Python syntax, data structures and reading/writing files. These are illustrated by a series of example programs. Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to write simple Python programs.


If you do not have a University of Cambridge Raven account please book or register your interest here.

Additional information
  • Our courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged according to our charging policy.
  • Attendance will be taken on all courses and a charge is applied for non-attendance, including for University of Cambridge students. After you have booked a place, if you are unable to attend any of the live sessions, please email the Bioinfo Team.
  • Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here.

1 other event...

Date Availability
Tue 16 Apr 2024 09:30 In progress
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