Dr Melissa Burke1,2,3, Ann Backhaus6, Mariana Barnes9, Michael Charleston11, Tyrone Chen12,13, Tracy Chew7, Jeffrey Christiansen1,2,3, Mark Crowe3, Deanna Deveson5, Victoria Perreau4, Jingbo Wang10, Nathan Watson-Haigh8, Christina Hall1,4
1Australian Biocommons, , Australia, 2Research Computing Centre, The University of Queensland, , Australia, 3Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation, , Australia, 4Melbourne Bioinformatics, University of Melbourne, , Australia, 5Monash Bioinformatics Platform, Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, , Australia, 6Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, , Australia, 7Sydney Informatics Hub, University of Sydney, , Australia, 8South Australian Genomics Centre, , Australia, 9Menzies School of Health Research, Darwin, Australia, 10National Computational Infrastructure, , Australia, 11University of Tasmania, , Australia, 12Monash University, , Australia, 13COMBINE – Australian Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Student Society, , Australia
The National Bioinformatics Training Cooperative brings Australian bioinformatics training providers together to deliver national training in a mutually beneficial way. What we love about this model is that it saves time and effort, fosters networks and connections between bioinformatics training providers and it is much more fun to work on training together!
First convened by the Australian BioCommons in 2021, the cooperative members collaborate to provide bioinformatics training that complements and extends local offerings by pooling expertise, training materials, resources, and trainers. We’ve developed 10 workshops through this initiative and have improved the diversity of specialist topics available to learners.
The cooperative model benefits cooperative members and their staff who deliver the training by i) increasing the national reputation of each participating organisation through greater exposure and reach ii) providing new opportunities for professional development iii) encouraging and enabling sharing and implementation of training best practices.
Here we describe how the cooperative model works in practice, explore examples of advantages this approach offers and outline ideas for the future of the cooperative.
Biography
Melissa is the Training and Communications Officer for Australian BioCommons. She has many years of experience in developing and delivering face-to-face and online training in bioinformatics with Australian BioCommons and EMBL-EBI. She is an active member of national and international working groups on bioinformatics training and has a particular interest in FAIR training. Melissa has a PhD in Molecular Parasitology from the University of Queensland.