Conference: Global Bioinformatics Education Summit 2024 — Energizing Communities to Power the Bioeconomy Workforce

The 6th Global Bioinformatics Education Summit will take place in New York City, to address the challenges of fostering a data-literate life sciences workforce. The Summit will feature world leaders in education policy and practice, and will include sessions focused on how policymakers, funders and industry partners can work together to create national strategies that support bioinformatics education and training. Bioinformatics-skilled individuals are critical to meet 21st century US needs for a changing workforce active in the bioeconomy. Scientific progress in biology is increasingly data-rich and model-driven, requiring skills currently outside of the standard biology curriculum. Data science programs alone cannot supply the need because domain-specific knowledge is essential for deriving understanding from information. Summit activities are focused on supporting working groups tasked with creating and sustaining the development of products such as curricula, competency frameworks, roadmaps and policy papers. A broad range of participants will be recruited, in order to ensure that perspectives from many affected groups are incorporated in the planning documents. The long-term goal is to create a comprehensive, broadly available, inclusive and actionable bioinformatics education strategy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.