GeneLab for Colleges and Universities (GL4U) partnered with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL) Planetary Protection Center of Excellence to provide space biology-relevant training in bioinformatics to educators at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and minority serving institutions (MSIs). The pilot GL4U: RNAseq Educator Bootcamp was held virtually from May 31st - June 10th, 2022, for 6 professors and 4 graduate-level students. The GL4U training program provides undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented groups the opportunity to learn about NASA and Space Biology, and to enhance their career prospects by gaining hands-on experience analyzing omics data, a skillset that is highly applicable and marketable in the life sciences. During the bootcamp, participants received training via lectures and hands-on instruction using Jupyter Notebooks (JNs) on how to 1) analyze GL RNAseq data and 2) run the RNAseq bootcamp for students at their home institutions, thereby extending the reach of this initiative to more students. All bootcamp materials and compute resources were provided during the course and all bootcamp content is available on the GL4U GitHub page.
