Advanced Bioinformatics

Modern-day biology is increasingly characterized by genome-scale and data-driven approaches. Bioinformatics use mathematics, statistics and computing to manage, analyze and build models from biological data to solve scientific problems. Present-day bioinformaticians are typically either bio-scientists armed with the methods of computer science, statistics and mathematics, or data analysts intimately acquainted with the nature and challenges of molecular biology. Moreover, the course is designed to leverage synergies between the two groups. The students get hands-on experience using some of the relevant tools and databases to apply it on different subfields of bioinformatics, from various facets of DNA sequence analysis to predicting RNA and protein structure. In these practical sessions, the students will apply bioinformatics tools to real-world biological problems. The course aims to instill an appreciation and understanding of a range of computational and statistical applications in biology involving the processing, analysis of and model-building from genomic data and other biological data.