The Roche Institute Foundation is offering its Scholarships for Training in Data Science in Custom Precision Medicine

The Roche Institute, in conjunction with the opening of the Master’s Degree in Bioinformatics applied to Personalized Medicine and Health, the title of the National School of Health at the Carlos III Institute of Health (ISCIII), has announced the names of the IV winners of its call for grants for training in data science in precision medicine. allotted.

David Rubioa biologist and research staff in training (PhD) at the NIMGenetics-Institute of Health Research of the Jiménez Díaz Foundation; Marcus Ashkara doctor in molecular biological sciences and a postdoctoral researcher who has worked at the Autonomous University of Madrid, at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB-CSIC) and at the Research Institute of the 12 October Hospital; Pablo Gonzalez Graduated in Biology from Complutense University of Madrid Sarah Munoz, a genetic biologist who served as a research assistant at the Severo Ochoa Center for Molecular Biology, UAM – CSIC; They were the winners of this edition. They all agreed to highlight the opportunity this scholarship offers them for their professional growth; In addition, it represents another step towards the implementation of customized PM in the national health system.

The Master’s Degree in Bioinformatics Applied to Personalized Medicine and Health is jointly organized by the National School of Health of the Carlos III Institute of Health (ISCIII), the Spanish Society for Biotechnology (SEBiot), the National Center for Cancer Research (CNIO), Barcelona Supercomputing Center – National Center for Supercomputing (BSC-CNS). Dr. Fatima Al-ShahrourAnd the Head of the Bioinformatics Unit at the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), is co-director of the Master’s program, with Dr. Alfonso ValenciaAnd the ICREA Research Professor and Director of the Department of Life Sciences at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – National Center for Supercomputing (BSC-CNS).

“Having the support of the Roche Institute is an additional guarantee of the relevance and robustness of the Master’s degree which is seen by the institution’s distinguished position as an observer of biomedical development in our country and a benchmark in the generation and dissemination of knowledge in personalized medicine. An example of cooperation between the public and private sectors in favor of training health professionalsValencia statements.

for Consuelo Martin from God, Managing Director of the Roche Institute Foundation, “The awarding of these grants emphasizes the Foundation’s work in enhancing the training of future professionals in bioinformatics and the need to integrate new features into the health system; In this way, we cooperate to bring the medicine of the future to the present“.

The Roche Institute awards winners with financial aid covering 80% of the cost of master’s registration, each. Dr. Al-Shahrour says:These scholarships are awarded to master’s students, assessing their academic and professional merits, and facilitating access to training for promising students with economic constraints.“.

With this scholarship, selected people will be able to extend their training in all major areas of data science, such as omics science, machine learning, or artificial intelligence. Training in bioinformatics and data science is critical in a sector such as healthcare as the number of trained and qualified new professionals in these areas is still very limited. According to Dr. Al-Shahrour, this training is essential given the increasing amount of multi-omic data available in the biomedical field. According to the head of the CNIO’s Bioinformatics Unit, “This data is generated from sequencing a patient’s genomes and is already used to improve disease diagnosis and treatment“.

Artificial intelligence, getting more and more important

For this reason, we must add an increasingly significant number of AI-based tools that are being developed for application in health and research. According to the researcher:These tools will be essential to meet the challenge of personalized precision medicine, and in fact, are already beginning to gain important applications in related fields such as medical image analysis or clinical decision support.“.

To learn how to exploit the possibilities they offer, students will gain skills in programming, data science, and AI/ML applied to data derived from biomedical and health studies. “The master also provides advanced knowledge of computational analysis and biomedical interpretation of genome sequence data, transcripts, epigenomes, etc. Necessary for the application of customized precision medicine in the health systemDr. details. blackbird;