2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This National Science Foundation (NSF) International Research Experience for Students (IRES) site centers around a common theme of bioinformatics. Students selected for this program spend 10 weeks at the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) in Stockholm, Sweden using and developing bioinformatics tools to analyze ‘-omics’ (i.e. genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic) data generated from human subjects. Since the program’s inception, a significant amount of effort has been made developing programming to prepare students for their research projects. Specifically, technical training sessions focused on coding languages and professional development sessions focused on scientific communication have been developed and provided to the IRES students during the first two years of the program. While both technical and non-technical trainings have been developed for this IRES site, the focus of this paper is to highlight the technical training sessions since these materials were identified as an area for improvement in the external evaluation following the program’s first year.