BGSA
The Bioinformatics Graduate Student Association (BGSA; [email protected]) is a student-run organization with two main goals: building community among the graduate students in DCMB and acting as a conduit between students and faculty/staff. BGSA hosts social events throughout the year, including social hours and a Friendsgiving (a potluck Thanksgiving for students). Another aspect of BGSA is placing students on departmental committees to increase student representation in the department.
BBSU
The Bioinformatics Black Student Union (BBSU; [email protected]) has been established and is a student-organized group dedicated to providing resources, networks, and a forum for Black students in DCMB. Students who have a general interest to learn more about bioinformatics tools and careers are also encouraged to take part.
DANG!
The Data Analysis Networking Group (DANG!; https://um-dang.github.io) is a forum for post-docs, grad students, and other researchers at the University of Michigan to discuss how to analyze, present, and visualize their data. Monthly meetings cover requested topics or specific problems & solutions that we have encountered. Don’t know how to visualize your results? Come to DANG!, and hopefully as a group we can come up with a method. Did you recently discover an amazing R package or script? Come to DANG!, and share with us how you accomplished that. Our hope is that these meetings & discussions will foster new ideas within our respective fields.
Girls Who Code
The DCMB Girls Who Code Club (http://umich.edu/~girlswc/) seeks to provide a collaborative and supportive environment for high schoolers of all skills levels and backgrounds interested in learning how to code. Due to the research expertise of our graduate student Facilitators, our club curriculum is focused on computational data analysis and the Python programming language. Participants learn core coding concepts and implement their new skills in a data science capstone project of their choosing.
PACCAR
Founded in 2023, PACCAR is a collaborative and innovative organization comprised of like-minded students who are committed to pushing the boundaries of innovation in the field of biotechnology. The organization's primary mission is to bridge the gap between computational data science and biomedical research. To accomplish this, the organization is focused on the educational enrichment of its members through lectures on various biotechnology and programming concepts. Following this instructional material, its members then engage in various research projects where they apply and improve their new-found skills. Through this mechanism, PACCAR not only piques the interest of its members but also fosters academic and professional development.