BIDS-TP Program

BIDS-TP Specific Objectives

Competency-based Curriculum

Provide a competency-based curriculum of didactic and experiential coursework, teamwork, leadership skills, career development, and laboratory research training that instills lifelong learning and develops broad background in the biomedical informatics and data science;

Fundamental Training

Train students in the fundamental computational data science, bioinformatics, and biostatistics principles of holistic modeling, representation, and inference of diverse biomedical processes and clinical research systems;

Transdisciplinary Training

Provide transdisciplinary training in mechanisms of disease, data-driven discovery, modeling human conditions and interactions between genetics, environmental, and phenotypic effects;

Promoting Research and Science Discovery

Promote independent, innovative, rigorous, and reproducible scholarship, team-science, and research discovery in the area of biomedical informatics;

Individualized Development Plans

Offer extensive and customized individualized development plans (IDPs), tailored mentoring plans, peer-mentoring, professional networking, and career development opportunities;

Holistic Research Rigor, Scientific Reproducibility, and Ethical Scholarship

Emphasize the critical importance of holistic research rigor, scientific reproducibility, and ethical scholarship;

Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR)

Provide training in Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR), oral and written communication, grant-writing strategies, and computational techniques; and
Continuously improve the BIDS-TP by rigorous evaluation and quality improvement based on metrics and feedback and communication with all stakeholders.

Additional BIDS-TP Program Components

Internships

Capitalizing on the extensive DCMB collaborations, MIDAS partnerships with industry, and our significant alumni network, including a ~200 member LinkedIn group, the Program will catalogue and provide opportunities for hands-on internship experiences for all BIDS-TP Fellows and Trainees. While expanding their professional network, this practice-based experiential learning will prepare BIDS TP graduates for careers in the biomedical industry, healthcare analytics research, tool development, and data-driven discovery. Past experiences suggest ~50-75% of BIDS-TP students will elect to take summer internships during Yr1-Yr2.

Lab Rotations

From the beginning of launching their graduate careers, all BIDS-TP students will complete 2-3 laboratory rotations, one semester of teaching experience (if the trainee expresses an interest in an academic career track), complete their required coursework, complete their preliminary examination, and write and defend their dissertation. Students are expected to be promoted to candidacy at or before the end of their second year of training, after passing the preliminary examination in their specific field. Decisions to promote students to candidates will be made by each feeder Program, Bioinformatics, and Data Science (e.g., Biostatistics, EECS, Biomedical Engineering). Preliminary examinations for enrolled BIDS-TP Fellows and Trainees are expected to include one bioinformatics- and one data science-oriented research topic, and their dissertation committees will include co-Chairs and mentors from different disciplines.

Matching Trainees with Program Faculty

As BIDS-TP Fellows and Trainees complete their 2-3 lab rotations during their first year in the program (junior student status), they will explore opportunities to match with a faculty mentor and a research lab by the start of their second year (senior status) in the Program. This will ensure that they can initiate their deep research dive during their senior year in the Program and are embedded in an enriched environment that matches their interests and skill with specific research directions and appropriate mentoring. Applicants to the BIDS-TP will be asked to review, contact and list (non-binding) examples of mentor choices they may be particularly interested in pursuing. This will allow the Program to coordinate capacity, and mentor load in the preliminary matching of students and mentors/labs.

Annual Workshops

At the end of each academic year (end of April to early May), the MIDAS Institute will offer a BIDS-TP specific week-long workshop for all participating BIDS-TP Fellows and Trainees. This workshop will be focused on the latest data science developments, methodological applications, and software tools to model, analyze, and interpret complex heterogeneous biomedical informatics data. This 40-hour workshop will be organized by the MIDAS Core faculty and will be required for all participating students (both Fellows and Trainees). The workshop will include hands-on examples of planning, acquiring and handling large-scale biomedical and health informatics data. Students will also be offered opportunities to attend additional workshops each year, taking place across the US, that address their specific research needs. Another Annual week-long workshop will cover Rigor, Transparency, and Reproducibility, see Responsible Conduct of Research Instruction Plan Appendix. This workshop will cover Study Design, Data QC & Processing, Code, Software & Services, FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reuse) principles for data, metadata, code and services, and Effective Dissemination.

Short-Courses

Each Summer (May - August), the University of Michigan offers 100s of short courses (½ to 4 weeks long). For instance, the Institute for Social Research (ISR), the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), and School of Public Health (SPH) offer more than 100 Summer Program courses in learning quantitative methods, data analytics, and statistical modeling at various skill levels.

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