In 2013, CCBB began sponsoring training programs and peer-led working groups to meet the growing need for computational and bioinformatics skills. These events are geared towards graduate students, postĀdocs, and faculty who are just starting new research projects that will involve programming and statistics but who have little or no background in the area. The working groups provide informal weekly sessions that facilitate the transfer and sharing of knowledge, while short courses provide and in depth view of a topic during one morning or afternoon.
While some of the courses are taught by our bioinformatic consultants, we try to draw from an ever-growing community of experts to teach introductory courses and lead the working groups. For the Fall 2015 semester, we have an excellent line up of Peer Mentors that are excited about empowering you with new tools that will further your research.
James Derry is a Senior Systems Administrator for the College of Natural Sciences. James has been teaching Python for Biologist and a microcontroller course for the past three years.
Groves Dixon is a post-doc in Dr. Mark Kirkpatrick's lab. Groves has been a TA for RNA-seq workshops and was the TA for the undergraduate Big Data in Biology FRI Stream. He also teaches Fall 2017's Intro to RAD-Seq short course.
Spencer Fox is a graduate student in Dr. Lauren Meyers' lab. Spencer co-organizes of the Peer-led Data Analysis in R working group that meets during the Fall semesters.
Benjamin Jack is a graduate student in Dr. Claus Wilke's lab. Ben assists with the Open Coding Hour that meets each Tuesday from 4-5 pm in the MBB library.
Sean Leonard is co-advised by Dr. Nancy Moran and Dr. Jeff Barrick. Sean assists with the Open Coding Hour and has been a teaching assistant for multiple short courses and the BDiB Summer School.
Dr. Jeff Barrick, co-organizer of the first next-generation sequencing course at UT Austin
Nichole Bennett, Biodiversity Informatics Programmer, Science Communicator
Dr. Daniel Boutz, Proteomics course instructor
Dr. Amelia Hall, Clinical Genomics and Bioinformatics
Rayna Harris, graduate student in the Hofmann Lab.
Dr. Ben Liebeskind, co-founder of the Peer-led Working Group in Biocomputing
Dr. Oana Lungu, Protein Modeling course instructor
Dr. Scott Hunicke-Smith, co-organizer of the first next-generation sequencing course at UT Austin
Dr. Mikhail Matz, Ecological Genomics and RNA-seq instructor
Dr. Kris McGary, Biological Networks course instructor
Dr. Kelly Pierce, co-founder of the Peer-led Working Group in Biological Statistics
Nate Pope, graduate student in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior
Dr. Stephanie Spielman, Research Assisant Professor in the Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine at Temple University, in Dr. Sergei Kosakovsky Pond's lab.
Dr. Becca Tarvin, post-doc studying the evolution of chemical defense and resistance to self-intoxication in poison frogs (Dendrobatidae)
Dr. Jesse Webber, RAD-seq instructor
Dr. April Wright, co-founder of the Peer-led Working Group in Biocomputing