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. 2021 Sep 7:1:711463.
doi: 10.3389/fbinf.2021.711463. eCollection 2021.

From In-Person to the Online World: Insights Into Organizing Events in Bioinformatics

Alessandra Lima da Silva  1 , Ana Paula de Abreu  2   3 , Diego Mariano  3 , Felipe Caixeta  1 , Fenícia Brito Santos  1 , Fernanda Stussi D Lage  4 , Gabriel Quintanilha-Peixoto  1 , Heron O Hilário  5 , Joicymara S Xavier  6   7 , Lucio R Queiroz  1 , Nayara Evelin de Toledo  1 , Raphael Tavares  1 , Rodrigo Bentes Kato  1 , Roselane Gonçalves Dos Santos  1 , Stellamaris Soares  1   2 , Wanessa M Goes  1 , Wylerson G Nogueira  1 , Thiago M Batista  8 , José Miguel Ortega  1 , Vasco Ariston Azevedo De Carvalho  1 , Glória Regina Franco  1 , Raquel C de Melo-Minardi  3 , Aristóteles Góes-Neto  1
Affiliations

From In-Person to the Online World: Insights Into Organizing Events in Bioinformatics

Alessandra Lima da Silva et al. Front Bioinform. .

Abstract

Bioinformatics is a fast-evolving research field, requiring effective educational initiatives to bring computational knowledge to Life Sciences. Since 2017, an organizing committee composed of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil) promotes a week-long event named Summer Course in Bioinformatics (CVBioinfo). This event aims to diffuse bioinformatic principles, news, and methods mainly focused on audiences of undergraduate students. Furthermore, as the advent of the COVID-19 global pandemic has precluded in-person events, we offered the event in online mode, using free video transmission platforms. Herein, we present and discuss the insights obtained from promoting the Online Workshop in Bioinformatics (WOB) organized in November 2020, comparing it to our experience in previous in-person editions of the same event.

Keywords: Bioinformatics; Science popularization; computational biology; education; online events.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Proportion of scientific themes in bioinformatics from the schedule of lectures of CVBioinfo and WOB events. The main themes of the lectures were: (A) RNA and transcriptomics; (B) proteomics; (C) genomics; (D) data science; and (E) career in bioinformatics. Total attendees: WOB = 2,727; CVBioinfo = 221.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Correlation color matrix among most interest topics of attendees enrolled in the UFMG’s Online Workshop on Bioinformatics 2020 (WOB). From 2,727 students registered, we asked the question: “What are the five topics you are most interested in learning at WOB20?”. Moreover, we evaluated the correlation of topic pairs. In this visualization, blue cells represent a higher correlation between topics of interest, and red indicates a lower correlation (i.e., blue suggests that students interested in topic X–column–are also interested in topic Y–row). Some clusters were highlighted in rectangles with black borders and calculated using Euclidean distance. Figure generated using Orange Data Mining (https://orangedatamining.com/).
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Attendees grouped by age and sex. Total attendees: WOB 2,727; CVBioinfo 221. (A) Quartile (0.25, 0.5, 0.75): 22, 26, and 31 (WOB); 22, 25, and 28 (CVBioinfo). Mode: 22 (WOB) and 25 (CVBioinfo). Mean: 27.46 (WOB) and 26.44 (CVBioinfo). Median: 26 (WOB) and 25 (CVBioinfo). Max value: 71 (WOB) and 53 (CVBioinfo). Min value: 14 (WOB) and 18 (CVBioinfo). (B) Male/Female proportion in CVBioinfo (upper stacked bar) and WOB (lower stacked bar). Conecting line between bars indicate change in values.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Attendees are grouped by education levels (percentual values). For M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees, we considered completed or in progress. Total attendees: WOB = 2,727; CVBioinfo = 221.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Comparison between the percentage of registrants in the face-to-face event called CVBioinfo 2020 (left) and in the online event, named WOB 2020 (right). CVBioinfo - Summer Course of Bioinformatics 2020 (n = 221) and WOB–Workshop Online on Bioinformatics 2020 (n = 2,727). Registrations grouped by Brazilian states are shown on the bar plot in the center. Figure generated using Python (Plotly and pandas libraries), Microsoft Excel, and Adobe Photoshop.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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