League of Brazilian Bioinformatics: a competition framework to promote scientific training

Abstract

Backgroundthe scientific training to become a bioinformatician includes multidisciplinary abilities, which increase the challenges to professional development. Competition frameworkin order to improve and promote the ongoing training of the Brazilian bioinformatics community, we organize a national competition, with the main goal to develop human resources and abilities in Computational Biology at the national level. The competition framework was designed in three phases: 1) a one-day challenge composed of 60 multiple-choice questions covering Biology, Computer Science, and Bioinformatics knowledge; 2) five Computational Biology challenges to be solved in three days; and 3) development of an original project evaluated during the 15th X-meeting. Resultsthe first edition of the League of Brazilian Bioinformatics (LBB) counted 168 competitors and 59 groups, distributed into undergraduate students (14.4%), graduate students (12.6% master and 16.8%, Ph.D.), and other professional fields. The first phase selected 46 teams to proceed in the competition, while the second phase selected the three top-performing teams. Conclusionduring the competition, we were able to stimulate teamwork in the main areas of Bioinformatics, with the engagement of all research-level competitors. Furthermore, we identified opportunities to deliver and offer better training to the community and we intend to apply the acquired experience in the second edition of the LBB, which will occur in 2021. Supplementary informationSupplementary data are available at Bioinformatics