The LAC Forum on Bioinformatics Education 2022 is a working meeting for representatives and parties interested in generating, including or maintaining academic programs in bioinformatics, genomic sciences, computational biology and related disciplines; all geolocated within the Latin American and Caribbean regions. The forum will be held virtually within the framework of the series of tutorials and workshops of the conference ISCB-Latin America SoIBio BioNetMX Conference on Bioinformatics 2022, on November 7, 2022.

In general, different topics of interest related to the strengthening of bioinformatics in educational programs, whether undergraduate, master, PhD or specialization, are discussed; promote the inclusion of bioinformatics curricula in the life sciences; and address current challenges in the region, such as common infrastructures and decentralization of education/research.

Specifically, the event will address the following topics:

• Bioinformatics for Life Sciences Careers
• Infrastructure: from language barriers to computing infrastructure
• Decentralization at regional, national and continental level

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Key dates 📌

• Forum day: Monday, November 7, 2022 (VIRTUAL AND FREE)

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Registration 📝

You can register to the LAC Forum on Bioinformatics Education 2022 here.

Note: Click on the “Register for only the Second Latin-American Bioinformatics Education Forum Now” option from the previous link to register to the forum.

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Detailed description of the event and brief history

The Latin American and Caribbean Forum on Bioinformatics Education 2022 is a working meeting for representatives and interested parties related to academic programs on bioinformatics, genomic sciences, computational biology and similar disciplines. It aims on discussing different topics of interest linked to strengthening bioinformatics educational programs, either undergraduate, masters, doctorate, or specializations; promote the inclusion of bioinformatics curricula in life sciences; and tackle current challenges in the region, such as common infrastructures and decentralization of education/research.

The first LATAM forum on bioinformatics education took place in May 2021 within the 2021 Bioinformatics Education Summit, which was co-organized by CABANA and Goblet. It was part of the activities directed to start addressing topics of special interest to the communities within the Low-to-Middle-Income countries (LMICs) focusing on their specific challenges. The general discussions at the LMICs sessions were aimed to tackle concerns related to bioinformatics infrastructure to support education and training and also initiating conversations about broadening bioinformatics training to non-hot spot regions. However, the event was also focused on further integrating the Latinamerican communities into global bioinformatics education discussions and decision making.

Having the above mentioned points in mind the organizing committee, comprised mostly by Latinamerican representatives, organised the first LATAM forum on bioinformatics education. The forum gathered around 30 representatives from diverse academic institutions within LATAM, making an extra effort to have representatives from Central America.

The event was divided into three main parts. It first served as an opportunity for all to meet each other and network within academic representatives from the region. Second, it served as a platform to hear about four different cases of creating and maintaining bioinformatics academic programs; one undergraduate program from Universidad de Talca (Chile), one specialization program from Universidad de Chile (Chile), one Master program from Universidad Nacional de Quilmes (Argentina), and one PhD program from Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil). The third segment of the forum served as an open discussion platform to talk about the challenges that everyone has faced to open and maintain bioinformatics programs or include bioinformatics in their academic programs. A survey was conducted within the event, and through this document most participants expressed their desire to have regular meetings and to conduct the forum on a yearly basis.

As part of the ongoing efforts of the organisation team to continue to support academic programs within Latin America and the Caribbean, the Bioinformatics Education Forum was requested to be a part of the ISCB-LA SoIBio BioNetMX 2022 - Workshop and Tutorial series. The forum will take place following a virtual mode on Monday 7 November 2022 at 14:00 – 18:00 hrs CST (Mexico City time).