Helis Academy - Postgraduate courses for Data Analysis and Stewardship for Industry and Academia
Creators: name: Dupuis, Lauren
name: Staiger, Christine
name: Ehrhart, Friederike
name: Botzki, Alexander
name: Baute, Joke
name: Bosnacki, Dragan
name: Weffers, Harold
name: Evelo, Chris
name: van Gelder, Celia
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2019
Subjects: Helis Academy, Education in Life Sciences, Data Stewardship, Data Analysis

description: <strong>1. Introduction</strong> Companies in life sciences are constantly looking for new talent to develop careers and hence enhance their business. However, there often exists a gap between the competencies of the candidates and those required to successfully fill a position in industry. Students are rarely “industry-ready” immediately following the completion of their degree. Furthermore, some jobs require specific skills that may not be part of the general academic curricula. To bridge that gap, training needs must be assessed and followed by an action to develop courses to address the training needs. The Health and Life Sciences Academy, or Helis Academy, was recently formed with ten partners in industry and academia from Flanders and the south Netherlands, funded by the EU (Interreg), working together to address the needs. The first set of data science training courses will be offered at the end of May 2019. <strong>2. Data analysis and stewardship as crucial elements of health and life science industry</strong> The industry in Life Sciences is and will increasingly become a crucial piece of the economy for both Flanders and the Netherlands. Well trained individuals in the region are indispensable for the workforce, so the types of training available must be tailored to the needs of the surrounding companies. The volume of information and data will only increase as more developments are made in life sciences, a clear indication of the importance of data science for companies. The Helis Academy has chosen data science as one of their targets for training and broken it down to four specific topics: omics data analysis, statistics, FAIR data stewardship, and machine learning. Omics data analysis facilitates understanding of processes in both healthy and diseased states in the human body. Through omics data analysis, targets for disease treatment can be found, making it a valuable tool for companies in life sciences. Companies also benefit from the knowledge of good statistical practices. Understanding of statistical methods and the proper presentation of data is critical for companies that will invest money in developing the outcomes from scientific studies. Further, FAIR data stewardship is necessary to ensure the (re)usability of data. Proper data curation, data preservation, and information on data provenance reduces costs of added experiments and allows the use of data for subsequent studies that may not have been considered at the time the data was collected. Machine learning is a valuable tool for spotting patterns in large data sets that would take humans years to sort through, making it a valuable tool when understanding the sheer volume of data available in life science fields. After identifying these four topics of interest for further training, the development and first edition of a modular course has been planned to train graduate students and job beginners. <strong>3. The Helis Academy Data Analytics &amp; Stewardship course layout</strong> The Helis Academy theme of Data Analytics &amp; Stewardship will start with organising a course at the end of April 2019 to provide data science training. The course will be given in four different blocks briefly summarized in Figure 1. The major training topics are listed for each block of the course. More information can be found at the Helis academy website (https://www.helisacademy.com/nl or https://www.bigcat.unimaas.nl/helis-academy/). <strong>4. Outlook</strong> The May 2019 Helis Academy training will serve as a first test for the initiative. Upon its completion, the course will be critically assessed to determine where improvement is possible. A questionnaire has been sent to companies to inquire about their specific training needs. In addition, we are actively reaching out to companies for interviews about their challenges and training needs and for an inventory of possible company trainers. The feedback will be incorporated in subsequent versions of the course.