Successful first ZHAW-SIB summer school “Genomics and evolution of microbial pathogens”
From August 24th to September 4th 2015, the two Institutes of Applied Simulation (IAS) and of natural resource sciences (IUNR) together with the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics successfully held a joint ZHAW-SIB summer school “Genomics and evolution of microbial pathogens” GEMP 2015.
The school was organized by Dr Maria Anisimova (IAS) and Dr Theo Smits (IUNR) as a trial run of the anticipated “Bioinformatics, genome biology and –omics” course within further specialization programs within ZHAW.
The total 14 participants from Switzerland and abroad (Finland and France) have attended the intensive program with 6-7 hours daily mix of lectures, practical exercises and talks from invited speakers (US, France, Germany, Geneva, ETH Zurich, UZH, Agroscope). Social activities included a walking day-trip, a grill party in the forest, and ZHAW gardens excursion.
Students feedback were very positive including: “We learnt so much!” and “I did not realize how many useful methods we could apply to our data, the course helped a lot”.
As a conclusion, the curriculum used for the summer course, the teaching approaches, the mix of topics and invited speakers have been very successful. This course therefore represents a successful collaboration between the two institutes IAS and IUNR and their team members.