Advanced Research Methods/Data Mining

Catalog description

This course addresses the process of experimental design and current experimental methodologies in biology. The goal of this course is to introduce graduate students to the principles of current advanced research methods, both in theory and in practice. Additionally, it will introduce methods for data mining, analysis and presentation. The course will be a mixture of lectures, discussion of research papers and hands on sessions using the instruments discussed during the respective sessions. Some sessions will also involve practical application of computer tools using experimental data sets. Students enrolled in this course will learn basic bioinformatics and data mining techniques using freely available web-based resources tools. Students will also be introduced to the use of advanced features in – amongst others - Microsoft Excel, Graphpad Prism, ImageJ and Microsoft Powerpoint in the analysis and graphical presentation of common types of experimental data. Participants will be expected to be reasonably familiar with the basic features of MS Office programs and to have an understanding of first year undergraduate-level statistics. The objective is to not only help students understand the methods they might use in research but to also alert them to alternative research methods that they might not have considered otherwise.