CSC

	Tehdyt toimenpiteet University of Tampere Institute of medical technology Group leader: Mauno Vihinen Home page: http://bioinf.uta.fi Bioinformatics group started in Tampere in the beginning of the 1998. IMT Bioinformatics group consists of research scientists, technical staff and undergraduate students. The team is truly multidisciplinary including bioinformaticians, physicians, chemists, computer scientists, statisticians, biologists and biochemists. Currently the group consists of close to 20 members. Research: The main research topics of the group are bioinformatics mainly related to the analysis of genotype-phenotype and protein structure-function correlations usually in relation to human hereditary diseases, especially immunodeficiencies. Another major research area is related to gene and protein expression (microarrays, proteomics) data analysis. The group has studied for many years bioinformatics related to immunology and developed several data and knowledge bases for immunodeficiences as well as analysed structure-function and genotype-phenotype correlations of immunodeficiency-related proteins, genes and mutations. Recently the Bionformatics team has moved to systems biology with the aim of modelling mathematically certain immunological processes, which are important in health and disease. The group is in charge of over 100 databases and information sources, which are freely available in Internet. The goal of the research is to understand biological processes in detail in atomic, structural and genetic levels. The group has been active in many different fields of bioinformatics including e.g. sequence analysis, analysis of gene variations (SNPs, mutations), database and knowledge base development, protein structure prediction, studies related to structure-function relationships, protein engineering, microarray and proteomics data analysis, systems biology, database management, algorithm and program development, large studies of "-omics wide" features. Education: The group has provided education in bioinformatics throughout the years not only to students in Tampere, but also nationally and internationally. Courses have been in different fields of bioinformatics. Two larger course packages (25 and 12 credit units) have been provided together with the Center for Extension Studies, University of Tampere year 2002 and 2005. Bioinformatics has been one of the four specialization lines in the Biotechnology curriculum at IMT since 2001. Our distance learning courses obtained year 2002 the National Quality Award in Web-based Teaching from the Ministry of Education and the National Board of Education. Currently three courses, Introduction to Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics in Functional Genomics, and Structural Bioinformatics are available. Fourth course in protein modelling will be released later this year. Hundreds of students have participated on the different lecture and distance courses. As a new initiative an International Master of Science (MSc) Programme in Bioinformatics will start in September 2006. This programme will be jointly arranged with the Department of Information Technology, University of Turku. 15 places will be available in both universities. The students will have a BachelorÕs degree in a related field such as molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, computer science, or statistics. The entire curriculum will be in English. The curriculum will last for two years and be based on different types of courses including e.g. distance learning, seminars, lectures, and intensive courses where students with different backgrounds work together. Back to the group list