The third bioinformatics symposium of the African Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics (ACE-B) on the theme ”Data Sciences and the Covid-19 crisis” began, this Monday, June 6, at the Faculty medicine and odontostomatology. It was in the presence of the director of the African Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics, Professor Mamadou WELE; the dean of the Faculty of medicine and odontostomatology, Pr Seydou DOUMBIA. Also, several specialists and students participated online.
According to the director of the African Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics, Professor Mamadou WELE, this third bioinformatics symposium will be followed by a five-day training workshop for Malian students and young teachers and other countries around the world. He justified the choice of the theme relating to COVID-19 by stressing that this disease has impacted the whole world in the past two years.
“The aim is to see how to find the means to be used in the field of IT in order to better control this disease from the biology of the virus through epidemiology and treatment”, explained Professor WELE.
According to Professor Mamadou WELE, the role of the Center is training and research.
According to him, the Center is at the end of its fourth cohort of recruitment for the Masters with regarding thirty trained students.
As difficulties, the director of the Center indicated that the project is financed only by foreign partners. Also, he underlined the smallness of the premises while the ambitions grow further. To overcome this, Professor WELE has appealed to the authorities for the construction of a new Center that meets the needs.
Indeed, the African Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics (ACE-B) is a structure of the University of Sciences, Techniques and Technologies of Bamako (USTTB), inaugurated in 2015 thanks to the fruitful collaboration with the Nationals US Institutes of Health (NIH).
The Center’s mission is to train and provide expertise in Bioinformatics and Data Science in Mali and Africa. Its objective is to improve access to tools, training and advice in Bioinformatics and data sciences for scientific research.
The objective of this symposium is to strengthen the analytical capacities in data science of African students for the development of tomorrow’s Africa; introduced to the use of virtual reality; guide students’ choices of Data Science training and strengthen analytical skills in R.
The target audience is composed of students interested in data science as well as young researchers at the beginning of their career of graduate students in data science research fields.
Through this five-day workshop, the aim is to introduce participants to the use of virtual reality headsets; strengthen their ability to analyze data with R; promote Bioinformatics and Data Science and foster networking between Data Science players.
PAR MODIBO KONE
Source : Info-Matin
