April Rich, a sixth-year student in the Joint Carnegie Mellon-University of Pittsburgh PhD Program in Computational Biology (CPCB), hosted an online workshop aimed at democratizing access to bioinformatics tools in education.  

The two-day gene expression analysis workshop attracted 20 participants from around the globe, including educators from countries such as Iran and India. 

Motivated by a passion for teaching, Rich spearheaded the workshop in collaboration with Associate Professor Anne-Ruxandra Carvunis. “Anne had this opportunity to host workshops,” Rich said. “It was a great opportunity to get experience in making lesson plans and designing courses and materials to help students learn.” 

The workshop was hosted on Zoom on June 20 and 21. It focused on teaching undergraduate educators and students how to use bioinformatics tools to analyze gene expression, particularly novel genes. Participants learned how to use publicly available datasets and tools like Google Colab to study gene expression, localization and regulatory activators. 

“There’s a huge barrier to collect this kind of data because you need a lot of money and equipment,” Rich said. “The use of all these online tools allows for not having large, powerful computers, which makes it accessible for people who don’t have the kind of funding to make more cutting-edge research.” 

The workshop was structured around introductory lectures, breakout sessions and collaborative group discussions that encouraged active participation and knowledge sharing. Participants left the workshop with the skillset needed to apply these gene expression analysis tools in their own classrooms. 

“Our participants had very positive feedback, saying they learned new things and will implement this in their classrooms,” Rich said. 

Rich said this leadership experience has strengthened her desire to pursue a career in teaching. 

“It was rewarding to hear that people enjoyed and learned something from the thing that I created,” she said. “It makes me want to do this more.” 

For more information on workshops from the Department of Computational and Systems Biology, visit https://www.csb.pitt.edu/education/