To all current and prospective 1st year PhD students in Bioinformatics,

You are invited to apply to MedBioInfo, the National Graduate School in Medical Bioinformatics, established to provide advanced training in bioinformatics to the next generation of world-class life-science researchers.  Our 43 affiliated faculty members include most of the leading bioinformaticians in Sweden, and we also draw on the faculty of NORBIS, our Norwegian sister school. In January 2021 we admitted 24 students, of which exactly 50% were female -- a milestone which we are particularly proud to reach. The faculty and fellow students will form a key part of your future scientific network.

Our courses are short, worth 3 or 5 HP(ECTS). Each course typically requires a one-week at-home pre-assignment, one week in residence (or, during the crisis, by zoom), and (often) a  one-week take-home post-assignment. You would typically take two courses per year, for a total of 3 years. The courses are more specialised than can be provided by your home university. You will be matched with a faculty mentor, providing a perspective and advice complementary to that of your advisor. We hold meetings where you will attend talks and soft-skills workshops, present your research, network, and get feedback. Your first 2022 meeting will probably be in April, and there will likely be a second one in the Fall.  You will be granted a yearly travel budget. Best of all, this should be fun.

You are eligible to apply if you began or will begin your PhD at any Swedish university between January 2021 and April 2022, though there is quite some flexibility in this. This year it is particularly important that you apply rather than wait, because it is not yet clear whether we will be accepting additional incoming students after 2022. Target groups include PhD students in Life Science doing primarily computational research.Selection criteria include your CV, transcript, and the relevance of your research project. You will also need an endorsement letter from your advisor and a suitable laptop. We strive to have a broad distribution of home universities as well as a continued good gender balance.

You will be expected to attend your first course, "Applied Bioinformatics," probably in June, as will be announced on MedBioInfo.se. Several of our core courses require programming in Python. If your Python background is weak, you will need to strengthen your skills before your first course. There are many online courses for this, and we also recommend Shaw's "Python 3 the hard way."  For climate reasons we ask students (with the possible exception of those from Umeå) to avoid flying to MedBioInfo events.

The deadline is February 28, 2022. Our enrollment target is approximately 20 incoming students per year, though we have admitted more in recent years. You should sign up following https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/application-2022 , also linked to from medbioinfo.se . Feel free to email  with any questions. We look forward to reading your application.