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Post date: May 11, 2017 12:59:12 AM
After many hurdles, we were able to finally have our first meeting! To our surprise, about 30 people came out to talk omics! This was a huge success.
During the meeting, we first wanted to hear what brought everyone out to the meeting. The overwhelming message was that people wanted to learn more about Omics and connect with other people interested in Omics at SFU, which is perfect because that is exactly why we started this group! This ranged from a desire to know what other people are researching to meeting other people who are doing bioinformatics education at SFU. We had a few undergrads mention that they were near the end of their joint degree in MBB-CMPT and haven’t met other students in their program. Another interest was the evolution and accessibility of coding in biology related research and bioinformatics.
After that, we started to discuss what direction we saw the group going in for future meetings. Some members expressed interest in learning the problems of biology and the relevant application of computer science to those problems. Others wanted to learn about applicability and how a project is done from start to finish. Another idea was an informal journal club to learn how to critically evaluate techniques that were used. Additionally, many members were interested in learning specifically about all the different areas of omics research going on at SFU. These ideas are great that we will work to incorporate into our future monthly meetings. One suggestion for the next meeting was to have a conversation about the “terms of reference” i.e. what “Omics” means to you.
There were also some other great ideas that we might try to incorporate. These included having an SFU Omics Group team for hackathons or competitions and professional development opportunities involving bioinformatics skills. Although we don’t know how to approach these ideas yet (if you have any ideas please let us know!), maybe we will be able to accommodate them in the future. So, that is definitely something to look out for!
We would like to thank everyone that showed interest and came out to support our group!
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