We have several training opportunities in Bioinformatics.  These range from formal academic courses, in-house workshops (programming using Python/R and statistics), seminars, and summer schools. Occasionally, we also have internship opportunities to work on bioinformatics analysis for specific projects.

M.Sc. in Bioinformatics

We organize an M.Sc. in Bioinformatics, which runs every two years (next intake in October 2014). This interdisciplinary course is intended for students with backgrounds in the life or computing sciences, pharmacology, as well as maths and statistics. Other backgrounds are also considered eligible by the board of studies, subject to a brief interview. This 90 ECTS post-graduate degree is divided into a taught component and a research project component. 

The taught component (30 ECTS) equips the student with the necessary background material to tackle the research component.  This is also a unique opportunity for students to learn and familiarize themselves with the other areas required for bioinformatics training. Taught components are offered in molecular biology, computing, statistics, research methodology, and bioinformatics. Some of the topics discussed during the taught component are shown below.

The research component (60 ECTS) allows the student to participate in some practical bioinformatics analysis.  An example of the list projects which have been previously offered is available [PDF].  These bioinformatics projects usually fall in two categories; either methods development or applications.  In methods development the student develops an algorithm (and builds a tool) which may be used for some kind of bioinformatics analysis. The student evaluates this against other existing tools and state of the art in the application area.  In an applications project the student is given a dataset from a group leader at UM and their task is to analyse it to make some, hopefully interesting, molecular biology findings (past examples include RNA-Seq or Metabolomic analysis).

Part-time and full-time options for the M.Sc. in Bioinformatics are described in more detail here.

Some of our M.Sc. in Bioinformatics alumni (and their projects):

• Tristan Camilleri (Computational Drug Discovery for COVID-19)
• Daniella Debrincat (Combining Effects in Genetic Risk Models for Myocardial Infarction)
• Donald Friggieri (An annotation framework for variants that alter Promoter Transcription Factor Binding Sites)
• Matthew Pace (RNA-seq Analysis of an Acute Myeloid Leukaemia Cell Line Treated with Phenolic Compounds)
• Helena Teuma (Recalibration of minor alleles in human reference sequence)

Summer School

In September 2023 we are launched our first bioinformatics summer school called MALTAomics (details available here). This was well-attended, and we decided to run this again in summer of 2025.

The best way to keep updated on training opportunities is to join the Bioinformatics at the University of Malta google group (Bioinformatics@UM).