November 6th was the first official AGM (Annual General Meeting) of the Global Organisation for Bioinformatics Learning, Education and Training (GOBLET). Following a nomination process that started in September and a voting process throughout October, the first point on the agenda was to announce the results of the committee elections. From the Netherlands Celia van Gelder (Radboud umc, NBIC) has been elected co-chair of the Learning, Education and Training Committee of this global organisation.
The first official AGM marks the beginning of the future for GOBLET. It has legal foundation and is registered in the Netherlands. It has money in the bank due to the subscription funds of its 25 members and it is creating a co-operative and collaborative international approach to bioinformatics and computational biology training.
It was at a meeting 18 months ago in Sweden hosted by EMBnet that it was agreed that a more formal and joined up approach was required for training in the bioinformatics and computational biology international community; hence it was agreed that a foundation should be created, and GOBLET was formed.
The founder members agreed GOBLET’s aims:
- Provide a global, sustainable support and networking structure for bioinformatics educators/trainers and students/trainees (including a training portal for sharing materials, tools, tips and techniques; guidelines and best practice documents; facilities to help train the trainers; and offering different learning pathways for different types of learner);
- Facilitate capacity development in bioinformatics in all countries;
- Develop standards and guidelines for bioinformatics education and training;
- Act as a hub for fund gathering;
- Reach out to, amongst others, teachers at high schools, to bridge the gap to the next generation of bioinformaticians, and;
- Foster the international community of B3CB trainers.
Chair, Terri Attwood (EMBnet) said, “whilst today is very important for formalising GOBLET, I am proud to be able to say that we have already established the centralised portal that enables trainers to upload courses and materials and trainees to access this information. Now we can progress forward and build on this allowing the portal to go from strength to strength and GOBLET to achieve its other aims.”
To find out more about GOBLET visit their website.