Hi All,
I’m writing you in case if someone has a small research bioinformatics-related project to this academic term and wishes to find some smart student (or students) to do it.
Our St.Petersburg’s local bioinformatics school (named Bioinformatics Institute) provides 1-year study program in bioinformatics for biologists and software developers (this year ~40 students applied). It is additional education program, and combines lectures every Saturday (except holidays) with 1 course project for fall and spring terms + summer internship.
For now they are looking mentors, who could provide projects and guide students to do them.
Project supervising can be done remotely, for example, via Skype or email. It would be good if you could provide 1 hour per week. For student study project should take approximately 10 hours per week. This semester they start learning bioinformatics, and probably couldn’t do too complex tasks (of course, it depends on student personality).
I should also mention that at my university (named “Academic University”) this 1-year course is included to Master degree education program. It means that some of this year’s students are studying at this program now.
Since this is a part of main education for them, this course project means *a lot*. They'll be expelled if they do nothing useful. And that's why they will do their best not too fail (there is also a very tough selection to this MSc program and a very saturated program in fall semester in 1st year of education - so please don't push too hard! 2nd MSc program students are also interested in course projects - since in fall they are usually starting to write their thesis and look for thesis mentor - you may provide project for them also).
Other students should be also good and most probably could communicate in English (but you can interview them to be sure).
Here are basic projects requirements:
for 1 student, or for a team (1 student with biological + 1 with software development or CS background)
project can be done for 3 months
not very difficult project where you can guide
educational :)
I believe there is no fee for mentoring, scholarship for students is fully optional (in most cases there is no scholarships). But I may be wrong, because I haven’t tried mentoring before - for sure it is never mentioned in registration forms for mentors or elsewhere :)
Projects will be announced at September, 17th. Mentors wish to see them by September, 10th.
If you are interested, you can write to team (at) bioinformaticsinstitute.ru to ask for details and describe your project. They have a Google Doc for project descriptions, but for now it is available only in Russian, I think if you’ll just write them and describe your project it will be ok (or I can give you a link to it).
I could also help you while mentoring since I live in St.Petersburg and can go at that school at Saturday to find your student and try to persuade him/her not to be lazy :) Or even I can help them with some basic knowledge and/or coding - if you’ll decide to provide something related to structural bioinformatics, I’ll be happy to be involved =)