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Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
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Cambridge, CB3 0WA, UK [Directions]
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 765 000 - Fax: +44 (0) 1223 765 900
ccbi[at]damtp.cam.ac.uk

Reviews in Computational Biology: Assimilate, Write and Evaluate Reviews

A doctoral/graduate training course during Lent Term organised by

Dr Christophe Dessimoz (EMBL—EBI) & Dr James Smith CCBI, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Wilberforce Road.

Summary

The course aims to develop two important skills critical for a career in either academic research or industrial R&D: the ability to identify the next relevant questions from the scientific literature and to improve effective scientific writing. The course extends over the entirety of Lent Term and introduces doctoral students to the processes of review writing, manuscript submission and peer review. Students will attend the CCBI on Wednesday afternoons for a 2-part session. The first part is the attendance of the CCBI seminar series where a guest lecturer will be asked to present research and importantly provide an outline for a new review that can be written in a subtopic in their area of interest. In the second part, we will discuss the proposed review and aspects relevant to the processes of literature searching, scientific writing, and peer-review in general. One student will then have two weeks to write a review based on the presentation (and its associated bibliography) and be supervised along the process. Each manuscript is submitted to an on-line journal submission system and is immediately peer-reviewed anonymously by two students from the course. Each student will write one manuscript and provide two reviewer's reports on colleagues' written work. In 2010, three student reviews were developed and later accepted by Briefings in Bioinformatics (Oxford Journals).

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to recognise current topics, emerging questions and priorities in theoretical and computational biology. Participants will be adept in identifying the relevant literature from citations and databases. Participants will organise and summarise research work into a coherent and succinct narrative appropriate for a review and prepare a manuscript for submission. Importantly, each participant will have a chance to improve their written material from the feedback given by their colleagues who provide anonymous critical and constructive peer-reviews.

Content

We hope to cover a broad range of topics within Computational Biology and include many of the following: reconstructions and network descriptions of metabolic and regulation pathways, benchmarking strategies for multiple sequence alignments, epidemiology and evolution, cancer bioinformatics, phylogeography, computational systems biology, disease dynamics and drug target/pathway discovery. Most of these topics will be presented by guest lecturers and each contribution form the basis of a review assignment for a student. About two-thirds of the course will be devoted to these topical presentations and one-third will consist of material relevant to the processes of literature searching, scientific writing, peer-reviewing and publishing.

Participation

The course is designed for a limited enrolment of first- or second-year PhD students from the Graduate School of Life Sciences. There is a 10-week commitment of Wednesday afternoons starting promptly at 2pm and a workload outside the class mainly concentrated in the 2-week writing assignment. A certificate of attendance will be provided at the end.

Applications

The number of places are limited and applications must be sent by email. Previous publication experience is not essential. Each applicant must submit a single PDF file that includes both, 1) a 2-page covering letter with a brief description of the their PhD project, their research and wider interests in computational biology and a clear explanation why pursuing this course would be a valuable experience, and 2) a clear and detailed CV with contact details including an email address. Each application must be supported by a personal reference from the PhD supervisor confirming that they approve of their student attending the entire course. The student's application and the supervisor's reference must be sent as separate emails, addressed to Dr Christophe Dessimoz (dessimoz@ebi.ac.uk) by the deadline Tuesday 13th December. Notification of outcomes will be sent by email to all applicants approximately a week after the closing date.

Further information can be found on the course website