Visit this page to find out about recent ITN events, software updates, publications, new projects, and more!
Reproducibility Practices for Informatics
Version Control with GitHub
Containers with Docker
Usage of AI to help with transparency
Clinical Data Analysis
Single Cell and Bulk RNAseq
Spatial Transcriptomics
Resources available at the University of Michigan
sqlr - data management
ggplot2 - visualizations
survival - analyzing survival data
survminer - publication ready survival analysis data plots
Computing resources for cancer research
Data Ethics
Single Cell RNA Sequencing
Spatial Transcriptomics
Single Cell Protein Imaging
Machine Learning to predict treatment outcomes
In our first workshop, Carrie Wright talked about the fundamentals of how computing resources work, as well as important data ethics considerations for cancer research.
Kate Isaac then got the workshop attendees started on Galaxy.
In our second workshop, Xiaofei (Sophia) Song guided us through an overview of single cell RNA sequencing.
Kate Isaac then guided learners through a single cell RNA seq activity on Galaxy.
In our third workshop, Oscar Ospina guided us through an overview of spatial transcriptomics.
Oscar then helped the learners work through a spatial transcriptomics activity using spatialGE.
The next day, Alex Soupir, Candace Savonen, and Julia Wroble helped learners get familiar with single cell protein imaging data and analysis.
This included using data from the VectraPolarisData Package.
Elizabeth Humphries then walked through a single cell protein imaging activity using spatialTIME on PositCloud.
In our final workshop, Paulo Cilas Morais Lyra Junior, helped learners reproduce a Machine Learning study that predicted cancer patient outcomes with immune checkpoint blockade therapy.
This included a machine learning activity using PyCaret on Galaxy led by Kate Isaac.
The QIIMME 2 team included: Chloe Herman, Hannah Hagen, and Colin Wood, as well as guest QIIME2 developer, Colin Brislawn.
Candace Savonen talked about concepts in reproducibility and led a workshop about the command line, as well as Docker and Podman for scientists.
Kate Isaac showed us how to get started using tools like QIIME2 on Galaxy.
Carrie Wright talked about cloud computing and ITN resources.
Greg Caporaso gave an overview of the QIIME2 workflow and resources.
Hannah Hagen led workshop activities about microbiome metadata and provenance in QIIME2.
Chloe Herman led workshop activites about microbiome diversity and engraftment analysis.
Candace Savonen talked about how to use the ITCR funded tool GenePattern for gene expression analysis. Ted Liefeld helped partner with us from GenePattern for the activity.
Kate Isaac talked about the fundamentals of gene expression data, including different types of biases, as well as how to use the ITCR funded tool Galaxy for bioinformatics research.
Carrie Wright talked about fundamentals of computer hardware and cloud computing, as well as AI ethics.
Candace Savonen also talked about how Large Language Models (LLMs) work today.
Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash
We now have a profile on LinkedIn! Follow us here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/101136872/
We created a new R package that is now on CRAN to help people more easily collect metrics from various places. Check it out here: https://hutchdatascience.org/metricminer/
Our course introducing learners to writing smarter with Overleaf and LaTeX is now available on Coursera.
We have created 4 minicourses that are part of a larger course on AI for Decision Makers. You can take the courses on Coursera if you already have a membership or access the materials here. We will launch the courses on Leanpub soon!
Take the mini courses on Coursera:
Our colleagues at Sage Bionetworks have created a new website called OpenChallenges.io, which helps connect people to biomedical challenges to accelerate citizen science and data benchmarking.
Check out the current challenges!
Loqui, an interactive web application that helps you create videos from slides (Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides), now supports subtitles! You can download a text file in .srt format, complete with timestamped subtitles, or embed these subtitles directly into your videos. This lets you easily upload subtitled videos to Youtube by uploading your mp4 video file and including subtitles by uploading the srt file generated by Loqui.
You can try Loqui out here: https://loqui.fredhutch.org/
The National Cancer Institute Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology has created a new cancer data science resource that includes some of the ITN's materials and more.
Check out the wide variety of cancer data science training resources on datascience.cancer.gov! Whether you are new to the field or a seasoned researcher looking to expand your data science skills, you’ll find basic resources, free courses, tips, and more in the new section!
Our team, including Maisha Standifer (a partner at the Morehouse school of medicine), Le’Chaun Kendall, and Rohan Jeremiah presented a poster titled Increasing cancer-related community-engagement strategies among Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions (A047) at the AACR science of cancer health disparities in racial/ethnic minorities and the medically underserved conference. The conference selection committee gave our poster a special Patient Advocate Designation. See here for a relevant paper.
Candace Savonen led two workshops at the ITCR 2023 annual meeting. The first introduced trainees to the pull request process using Git and GitHub for version control and code review. The second introduced concepts related to automation using GitHub Actions.
Loqui which is a web-based app that helps you create videos from slides (both from Power Point or Google Slides). The notes become the audio, and the slides become the images. You can try Loqui out here: https://loqui.fredhutch.org/
ITN delivered 4 workshops in August 2023 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington, engaging with numerous cancer researchers, post docs, students, and scientists, covering a variety of topics.
Candace Savonen provided general guidance for genomics research and directed attendees to ITN resources for learning about what to do with various types of genomic data (including content about whole genome sequencing from Claire Mills).
Cailin Jordan (a Hutch graduate student) gave a presentation about sc-ATAC-Seq
Jacob Greene (a Hutch graduate student) gave a presentation about ChIP-Seq
Mary Goldman gave a demonstration of how the UCSC Xena Browser can help visualize many aspects of genomics research. The Xena Browser is an online exploration tool for public and private, multi-omic and clinical/phenotype data.
Carrie Wright taught about how computers work, the evolution of computing, how shared and cloud computing resources work, and resources for cancer research computing, including Galaxy and the Hutch computing cluster (available to Hutch employees).
Candace Savonen and Elizabeth Humphries taught about how to craft useful prompts, how to work with chatbots ethically, and the differences between many of the current popular Chatbots and tools.
Carrie Wright taught about best practices for finding, creating, and nurturing multidisciplinary teams, as well as for helping to support team members with diverse scientific backgrounds and life experiences.
ITN delivered 2 workshops in August 2023 at Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGEN) in Phoenix, Arizona.
Attendees from the Native American Cancer Prevention (NACP) Partnership, TGEN and the University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University joined us to learn about cancer computing resources, like Galaxy and microbiome analysis.
Greg Caporaso gave a demonstration of QIIME2, a next-generation microbiome bioinformatics platform that is extensible, free, open source, and community developed.
Howard Baek presented about ITN courses, software, and more at the 2023 annual National Cancer Institute (NCI) Junior Investigator meeting with a poster, short talk, and lunch session.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology blog called the Cancer Data Science Pulse featured the ITN in a post February 1, 2022 titled NCI’s ITCR Training Network Puts Cancer Research Tools and Training at Your Fingertips.