Four batches of bioinformaticians have been trained on COVID-19 research under a project by the Department of Science and Technology-Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DoST-PCIEERD).
Through the DoST-PCIEERD funded Internship Program for Increased local Bioinformatics Utility and Expertise (IMBUE) project, validated methods towards bioinformatics education were developed, leading to the successful training of 101 bioinformaticians in four batches with 25 interns per batch.
The project was completed along with the 28 interns tapped from the Philippine Genome Center (PGC) to help the country advance its COVID-19 research efforts.
"This initiative is well-suited to deliver the specialized bioinformatics training for biologists and healthcare professionals working on COVID-19," DoST said.
The training program is envisioned to specialize on viral metagenomics for next generation sequencing of SARS-CoV2 samples and protein structure analysis and molecular dynamics for drug discovery and development.