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Welcome to the website for the Summer School in Statistical Omics 2014, held in Split, Croatia, from Aug 1 to 15, 2014.

General Information about the Research Summer School in Statistical Omics

The School of Statistical Omics aims to train a new generation of omics scientists. The School consists of project-based training-through-research and a series of lectures designed to introduce students with a biological/biomedical/biochemical background to statistical analyses of multiple omics datasets. With the development of high-throughput technologies in recent years, the field of biology has become a data-rich field and, consequently, there is an increasing need for biologists trained in data analysis. The aim of this highly intensive School is training of a new generation of Statistical Omics scientists. In two weeks of work on a cutting-edge scientific project participants are introduced to highly relevant real-world problems related to the fields of glycomics and genomics and gain experience in using the R programming language.

The selected participants spend two weeks working on a project in small groups. Morning sessions are planned for lectures that are intended to give an overview of current state-of-the-art methods used in the field and corresponding theoretical background for the practical sessions that are held in the afternoons. The first two days are dedicated to an introduction to the field of Statistical Omics and selection of projects. All projects are presented by project leaders and students have the opportunity to choose the project they wish to work on. The groups are formed by balancing personal choices and equal distribution of participants over all projects. Each group consists of up to 5 students, a project leader and a tutor. During the School, several lectures will be given by leading scientists in the field discussing the latest advances and discoveries. The School ends with a small conference where students present their work through posters and presentations.

Given the nature and magnitude of the projects, students are invited to stay in contact with project leaders and to continue to work on their projects after the School, potentially leading to scientific publications or qualification works (e.g. MSc thesis).

Overview of RSSSO2014 (presentation by Lennart Karssen at the second annual meeting of the MIMOmics consortium)

Video recordings of the lectures can be found on YouTube

Participants and Staff Feedback for the School 2014

Participants and staff of the Research Summer School gave high marks to the school’s scientific and organizational components in the post-school evaluation. Students established good working relations with group leaders and members of the team and considered the projects to be real science. They were also excited to attend the guest lectures and to see how the methods they studied are applied in large-scale projects. The busy study program was complemented with social activities such as a cultural excursion to the historical city of Split, a boat cruise, a table tennis championship, playing basketball and badminton, and of course visits to wonderful Mediterranean beaches. The majority of students and teachers expressed an interest to join the School the next year and to recommend it their friends.

Participants of the School 2014 represented seven countries including Australia, China, Croatia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, and Spain, and different levels of education – undergraduate/graduate (postgraduate) students and young specialists.