Teaching Genomics in India

“Do you want to co-teach an RNA sequencing course in India?” This question kicked off one of the most rewarding and interesting professional experiences of my career.

Several months after being asked this question, I was boarding a plane to Bangalore with my colleague, and bioinformatics guru, Falko Noè. We both work in the genomics group of the Functional Genomics Centre in Zurich (FGCZ), which is a joint research and training facility of the ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. Our day-to-day work involves collaborating with, and giving advice to, life sciences researchers as well as providing access to the latest technologies and data analysis techniques. So, with this background, and the help of the teaching co-ordinator at the FGCZ, we headed off to India to share our knowledge.

After a weekend spent experiencing the many sights, sounds and tastes of central Bangalore we headed to The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP). The C-CAMP campus is to the north of Bangalore and located amidst what google maps describes as “fairly dense mixed jungle” which is a perfect description of the warm, leafy, quiet and tropical feel of the campus. C-CAMP is an initiative supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India and is a “catalyst of cutting-edge research and innovation”. Most interesting to me was their bio-incubation programme where they assist start-ups of academic origin from concept to market. 

Once on the campus we met the staff from C-CAMP and Swissnex India, who had been the driving force behind getting this the course organised. Swissnex is a Swiss government-funded agency that “connects people and ideas from Switzerland and India to foster exchange in education, research and innovation”; and that is exactly what they did. Next, we met the thirteen participants who represented the very broad spectrum of research and innovation going on in India. With Ph.D. students, medical officers and start-up founders from universities, national research centres and biotech companies all represented to mention just a few.

What followed was five days of intensive learning by both the participants (I hope) and the teachers (definitely) from FGCZ and C-CAMP. The course involved theory lectures as well as hands-on lab work and bioinformatics sessions intended to provide all the necessary information to design, implement and analyse an RNA sequencing experiment. We were surprised and pleased by the levels of interaction with the participants who were as a rule much more engaged in the course than was our experience in Switzerland. We spent many tea breaks (I could write a whole blog about how good the tea was) and lunchtimes discussing how the most recent lecture/exercise related to someone’s research ideas and how the concepts would be used to help answer their research questions. In fact so involved were the conversations, both in and out of the classroom, that our final “project discussion” session was unnecessary, as we already knew everyone’s research inside and out. 

All in all this was an amazing and very rewarding experience and I hope that further collaborations, with Swissnex and C-CAMP or also similar organisations, can be realised. I know I will be saying “yes” again whenever I am asked.

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