2023 NASA GL4U Bioinformatics Bootcamp
In brief
Our lab hosted a 4-day genomics bootcamp (July 10th-13th)! This was the first in-person Gene Lab 4 Colleges and Universities genomics event, a project led by Drs. Amanda Saravia-Butler and Micheal D. Lee (@astrobiomike), made possible with NASA and JPL support.
A bit of background
CalState LA had the unique privilege of hosting NASA Gene Lab’s for Colleges and Universities (GL4U) bioinformatics bootcamp, a 4-day event attended by a group of 25 CSULA graduate and undergraduate students and faculty members. With expert guidance, all participants were lectured on the importance and applications of microbiology in space sciences and actively analyzed mice spaceflight microbiome data using command line programming software. The bootcamp goals were to 1) train students and educators in the technical tool kit used by NASA microbiologist and bioinformaticians with hands-on computing modules using real space biology datasets and 2) help participants explore NASA career options. This unprecedented exposure to space sciences, computer programming, and data analyses was made possible by NASA and JPL funding.
CSULA student Irene Ngo analyzes fecal microbiome data collected from mice experiments performed on the International Space Station.
CSULA student James Araiza (middle) discussing microbiome analysis pipelines with Western University of Health Sciences College of Veterinary Medicine invited faculty attendee, Professor Brian B. Oakley (right).
JPL Planetary Protection engineer, Dr. Lisa Guan, discusses pre-flight approaches to minimizing inadvertent forward contamination of Mars-bound spacecraft with Earth microbes.
Dr. Amanda Saravia-Butler delivering a hands-on bioinformatics-focused introduction to Unix and R.
Yours truly discussing the history of microbial ecology metrics.
Dr. Micheal D. Lee’s interactive bioinformatics lecture on alpha-diversity.
Dr. Amanda Saravia-Butler discussing Illumina sequencing with Professor Brian Oakley.
Dr. Micheal D. Lee delivering an amplicon analysis lecture.
Activity schedule.
Professor Oakley and Dr. Lee talk cloud computing resources for bioinformatics education.
NASA’s GL4U 2023 bootcamp participants @ CSULA.