The Global Organisation for Bioinformatics Learning, Education & Training (GOBLET) has released a report on the activities in the first five years of its existence.
Dr Celia van Gelder, manager of the DTL Learning programme, is a member of the GOBLET Executive Board. She explains: “GOBLET provides a global, sustainable support and network infrastructure for bioinformatics trainers and trainees, including a training portal for sharing materials, tools, best practice documents, and more. The organisation also facilitates capacity development in bioinformatics in all countries, develops standards and guidelines for bioinformatics education and training, and acts as a hub for fund gathering. GOBLET reaches out to teachers at high schools to bridge the gap to the next generation of bioinformaticians. In addition, it fosters the international community of trainers in this field.”
Report
The First Five Years report discusses GOBLET’s strategic alliances with international organisations and initiatives, as well as the key accomplishments and outputs arising from those relationships. The report also reviews how this work is beneficial to members and sets out GOBLET’s main ongoing objectives and ambitions. A series of appendices contain summaries of the various grants, donations, and in-kind contributions received during GOBLET’s first five years, along with details of the Foundation’s elected and acting Officers, and of its committees and their aims. Van Gelder: “We have also taken the opportunity to thank everyone – our organisational and individual members, our donors and in-kind contributors – for their dedication and support during GOBLET’s first five formative years.”
Van Gelder continues: “Being highly collaborative, GOBLET has a Joint Training Strategy with ELIXIR to maintain synergistic training discovery portals, and develop and deliver worldwide Train-the-Trainer workshops. GOBLET also contributes to the annual ICTP-funded CODATA-RDA Research Data-Science Summer Schools in Trieste. We participate in the education and standards work packages of the European COST Action CHARME. And GOBLET supports the GO TRAIN pillar of the GO FAIR initiative, aiming to provide training and mechanisms for standards-compliant training certification. We work closely with ISCB’s Education Committee, launching an Education COSI to provide a forum via which the ISCB and GOBLET training communities can harmonise their efforts.”
F1000 collection
GOBLET recently became the champion of the F1000 Bioinformatics Education and Training collection. In a recent blogpost, the GOBLET executive board members discuss the essential roles of education and training in bioinformatics and data science, and they reflect on their F1000 collection that is dedicated to publishing training-related content (research papers, posters, slides, white papers, etc). Van Gelder is one of the collection advisors: “The collection provides a platform to publish materials related to bioinformatics and data science training and education in the life sciences. It is a unique possibility to make bioinformatics education and training output findable and visible for the world.
More information
- GOBLET website
- F1000 Bioinformatics Education and Training collection
- First five years report
- Please get in touch if you would like certain Education & Training materials (F1000R articles, reports, white papers, posters, slides etc.) to be included in the F1000 Bioinformatics Education and Training collection: info@mygoblet.org.
- December 2016 news item: GOBLET: a global network of bioinformatics trainers and trainees
- April 2018 news item: GOBLET will curate F1000 Bioinformatics Training & Education collection