One of the main aims of the project is to train 20 young selected researchers, in order to establish a specialized high-skilled research group studying molecular biodiversity through bioinformatics knowledge. In fact, over 30 months training period concerning theoretical, practical and industrial research modules, the trainees will acquire full competence to face real biological problems which are specified either by their collaborators researchers or coming from their own studies.

The training course consists of three main modules:

Mod. A: theoretical module (≈1200 hours)

The main goal of this module is to provide an overview of the main biological and informatics subjects in order to fill out the existing knowledge gap between biologists and IT experts researchers. Moreover, in this module some scientific problems related to those implied in the project activities will be analyzed.

Mod. B: practical module (≈1980 hours)

The main goal of this module is to follow up the project activities through a collaboration between trainees and their scientific advisors.

Mod. C: industrial research module (≈120 hours)

The main goal of this module is to create deep knowledge about economic and management issues related to bioinformatic industrial projects.

The training course will be carried out as classroom and online lessons that will be held at IBM or partners' site. At the end of the training period, the 20 young researchers will carry on a final thesis dealing with specific case study, which will be discussed with a technical board.

Course Subjects

In the following section, the different subjects of the training course are listed in three main areas:

Biological Area

• Introduction to systematic and to the study of animal phylogeny
• Fundamentals of animal and plant cellular biology
• Fundamentals of biochemistry
• Principles of molecular biology
• Principles of zoogeography
• Fundamentals of genetics
• Introduction to systematic and to the study of plant phylogeny
• Principles of phytogeography
• Fundamentals of ecology
• Fundamentals of biodiversity
• Wine supply chain
• Cereal food supply chain
• Biostatistics
• Plant biodiversity

Computer Science Area

• Operating systems: Linux/Unix and Windows
• SW development
• Object-Oriented (OO) introduction
• Java basic
• Databases
• Java advanced
• IT architectures introduction and web-based applications development
• Web programming
• Data mining

Bioinformatics Area

• Introduction to bioinformatics and its applications
• Introduction to bioinformatics methods for genes and genomes analysis
• Bioinformatics laboratory
• Advanced bioinformatics