Bioinformatics Core Facility Scientist: ISCB Competency Framework Profiles

Bioinformatics Core Facility Scientists Competencies Task Force

Members from the  ISCB’s Bioinfo-Core group,  the Curriculum Task Force of the ISCB Education Committee, and other interested individuals joined forces at the 2023 ISMB Bioinfo-Core meeting to create the ‘Bioinformatics Core Facility Scientists Competencies Task Force’. This task force is actively working and its main objective has been to expand the most recent version of the ISCB Bioinformatics Competency Framework so that it reflects a typical Bioinformatics Core Facility (BCF) scientist career progression.

We kindly thank all task force contributors!!

Recurring members: Patricia Carvajal-López, Tim Downing, Madelaine Gogol, Shannan Ho Sui, Marta Lloret-Llinares, Lara Nonell, Lisanna Paladin, Gina-Maria Pomann, Adam Reid, Catherine Brooksbank

Contributors: Ana Castillo, Yesid Cuesta, David Corcoran, Nilson Coimbra, Jonathan Dursi, Bruno Gaeta, Oscar Marino, Tanja Ninkovic, Rodrigo Polo, Verena Ras, Wagaa M. Rashed, Steve Rozen, Nichole Shererer, Prashanth N. Suravajhala, Russell Schwartz, Ragu Yananamalli, Ananda Wu. Also, Rafsan Ahmed, Shounak Chakraborty, Philip East, Christopher J Fields, Gingy Huang, Radhika Ketani, Brent Richter, Julien Roux, Laura Woods. Siti Nur Bahiyah, Alexander Botzki, Hawwa Gabier, Will Gammerdinger, Geert van Geest, Paul Harrison, Jessica Holmes, Evance Juma, Francesc Lopez-Giralde, Lei Ma, Francisco Martin Garcia, Benjamin Moore, Xenia Perez Sitja, Chaimae Samtal, Amineni Umamaheswari

 This list is being presented  in alphabetical order by last name and is subject to updates as additional people join the efforts of this task force.

The project

The global community of bioinformatics educators have worked together on applying and developing bioinformatics education and training standards, particularly the ISCB Competency Framework. The third iteration of this competency framework has been completed and made openly available on the EMBL-EBI Competency Hub. The guidelines  with recommended best practices are now publicly available and the manuscript for the framework itself is currently being reviewed.

The ISCB competency framework covers a wide range of professional roles within the field of bioinformatics, and some roles that are heavily linked to this field.

A set of sample roles are available at the Competency Hub. These roles include a description of some of their typical tasks and background for a person who fulfils one of these roles. The competencies for each role have been assigned a minimum consensus of the proficiency level that is required for the role. The proficiency levels are assigned according to Bloom’s Taxonomy levels.

The Bioinformatics Competency Framework covers ten roles and different proficiency levels are assigned to each of the 13 set competencies. However, the framework does not reflect different career stages, such as beginner, intermediate, and advanced.

A working group has been stablished to address these challenges and is currently seeking for interested parties who are interested in contributing with these tasks. We are going to analyse different career stages of the roles in the framework, using the Core Facility Scientist as a use case. Once we establish how to analyse different career stages, participants can work on initiating the work on other selected roles.

The work will be continued asynchronically. The established task forces will also meet during a small series of meetings for coordinating work and analyse results, aiming on completing the competency profiles at the end of this year.

Further information about the competency profiles

More in-depth information about the ISCB Competency Framework