Bioinformatics: From Data to Discovery

When we launched the T-BioInfo bioinformatics platform in 2016, we envisioned it as a tool for researchers that can quickly extract insights from complex heterogenous datasets using raw data processing and machine learning tools.

Towards the end of that year, we discovered that in so many research teams, there is a real challenge of finding someone who is trained to perform the analysis. Often times, the data analysis is completely outsourced or handed over to a graduate student that spends endless hours replicating a pipeline that was published in a research paper. Not only is that ineffective, it is also unreliable, leading many teams to search for trained bioinformaticians that can understand the biological challenge at hand and deliver an analysis approach that is reliable.

This discovery prompted us to focus our energy on a bioinformatics educational platform that allows students to try practical assignments and learn from data analysis projects without being held back by the need to learn code or write bash scripts on Linux. While the approach can be challenged, it is a way to get your "hands dirty" really quickly and get from a basic understanding of a hypothetical problem to a real project with a dataset that you can analyze. It is also a way to handle many scripts and algorithms quickly and compare their outputs to select something that is best suited for the task at hand. This kind of an experience can really make a difference for someone new to bioinformatics.

In August, we launched our fist beta courses and asked people to take a look and give us some feedback. Of course there were many rough edges, but we are proud to say that today, just a few months later, we have over 5000 people enrolled in our courses and actively using the platform to develop their skills. We've been able to speak to over 10 different universities across the US and around the world that are interested in starting an evaluation study of our curriculum with their students. And we believe this is just the beginning.

If you ever want to try analyzing data for yourself - be it NGS transcriptomics data, exome-seq or metagenomics, you should try one of our courses. We are convinced you will have a much better understanding of the data and methods used to analyze it in just several lessons. Having access to the T-Bio.Info platform can now expand your horizons providing access to machine learning tools or multi-omics integration.