Advice on Improving Skills

[Nicholas_Bokulich]

Hi @MBowman,
See the topic below; the several of the resources, particularly software carpentry, are good places to start, both for building basic programming skills as well as rounding out foundational knowledge of bioinformatics in general.

European Workshop Resources?

Hi @Henrik, I can weigh in on this too. First of all, there will be a need for people with statistics and programming backgrounds in many areas of biomedical research for the foreseeable future. This definitely includes microbiome research, and I would expect psychobiology research as well. Biomedical research now requires “data science” skills that haven’t typically been included in biology undergraduate or graduate training, so there is a gap that needs to be filled. As @wasade mentioned, w…

@MBowman

picking the right analysis for the study design, coding, and interpreting the data

A couple recent papers, and there are many more out there:

Optimizing methods and dodging pitfalls in microbiome research - PubMed

Best practices for analysing microbiomes - PubMed

See also this website and article from Pat Schloss; while not directly related to acquiring technical skills per se, it is a really important facet of bioinformatics training and practice:

Riffomonas

Identifying and Overcoming Threats to Reproducibility, Replicability,...

@MBowman

I would also like to improve my skills in R as well

http://adv-r.had.co.nz/

Good luck!