Partnering to build national capability across Aotearoa's growing genomics research community
Over the last six years, as part of a partnership to build and diversify digital skill capabilities for genomics researchers across New Zealand, NeSI and Genomics Aotearoa have worked with researchers to deliver a Metagenomics Summer School at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland.
This year, the Summer School was spearheaded by University of Auckland Associate Professor Kim Handley and Post Doctoral Fellow Jian Sheng Boey. It hosted 20 early-career and mid-career researchers for four days of hands-on sessions related to metagenomics data management and analysis for genomics research.
Over the course of the school, the sessions dove into topics such as:
- Current best practices in metagenomics data analysis
- Curation, interpretation, and visualisation of metagenomic data
- Use of command line utilities in a High Performance Computing environment
"The initial goal for creating this resource was to fill knowledge gaps in applying metagenomic analyses in mostly academic research. Since then, there has been growing interest in using metagenomics in other areas such as agriculture, environmental monitoring, and healthcare," says Boey, who is also a Training Coordinator with Genomics Aotearoa. "We are very grateful to have enthusiastic attendees who actively engage with us and the learning materials with eagerness to apply them to their work. Given the computational demands of metagenomic analyses, our partnership with NeSI was crucial to make this event a success."
Access to the NeSI HPC Platform is critical for this kind of training event, as it enables the participants to get hands-on experience running computational workflows on a national computing facility.
Building capability from north to south
With the Auckland event wrapped up, the next major training event NeSI and Genomics Aotearoa are co-delivering is the Otago Bioinformatics Spring School.
Now in its fourth year, it provides a week-long immersive learning experience for participants, with a mix of domain-specific learning and technical upskilling interwoven throughout.
"The Otago Bioinformatics Spring School provides an opportunity to give students and early-career researchers a crash course on key bioinformatic topics and computational techniques to kick start their skills," says Dr Murray Cadzow, Research and Teaching IT Support at the University of Otago. "Rolling multiple workshops into a single event provides time and space for participants to really practise the fundamentals. Key to the success of the event has been the support of Genomics Aotearoa and NeSI."
It's a team effort to deliver the course, with support provided by:
Matt Bixley (Researcher Support Specialist, NeSI)
Professor Mik Black (Biochemistry, University of Otago)
Dr Murray Cadzow (Research and Teaching IT Support, University of Otago)
Dr Ludovic Dutoit (Zoology, University of Otago)
Dr Tyler McInnes (Genomics Aotearoa)
Dinindu Senanayake (Genomics Support Specialist, NeSI)
To learn more about the Otago Bioinformatics Spring School, click here.
