The Meta_Microbial workshop aims at providing academic researchers, students, and fellows with an overview of current tools to analyze next-generation sequence data and to make insightful interpretation towards the fields of microbial ecology and environmental microbiology. It will be a short-course (3 days) with lectures, paper discussions, practical examples, and two parallel “hands-on” sessions. The workshop will be given in-person at the Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto (FCUP) from September 4^th to the 6^th, 2024.

Coordination: Miguel Semedo, Postdoctoral Researcher at CIIMAR (msemedo@ciimar.up.pt) and Catarina Magalhães Team Leader at CIIMAR (cmagalhaes@ciimar.up.pt).

Instructors:

• Adriana Rego. Postdoctoral Researcher at CIIMAR. ORCID: 0000-0001-9647-1197.
• Francisco Pascoal. PhD Student at CIIMAR and FCUP. ORCID: 0000-0003-2315-358X.
• Miguel Semedo. Postdoctoral Researcher at CIIMAR. ORCID: 0000-0003-2263-2212.
• Nicola Gambardella. Fellow Researcher at CIIMAR. ORCID: 0000-0002-4343-332X.
• Catarina Magalhães. Team Leader at CIIMAR. ORCID: 0000-0001-9576-2398.
• Leandro Pereira. Researcher at CIIMAR. ORCID: 0000-0002-2311-7469.

Organization: Leonor Pizarro and Rúben Pereira (CIIMAR PhD student’s committee), Adriana Rego, Catarina Magalhães, Francisco Pascoal, Miguel Semedo, Nicola Gambardella.

CONTENTS (full program available here)

• Intro Sequencing technologies. Data generation.
• R and Python tools for microbial ecology studies in the “Omics Era”.
• Metabarcoding/Targeted Metagenomics. Diversity, taxonomy, and functional inference.
• Untargeted Metagenomics (whole genome sequencing) and functional interpretations.
• Exploring Online Resources and Repositories.
• Alternative statistical and data analysis tools to explore the microbial realm.
• Further insights on data visualization and analysis.

TARGET AUDIENCE (estimated number of participants: 25 – 50)

Graduate students, academic researchers, and other members of the research community interested in microbial ecology, environmental microbiology, metabarcoding, and metagenomics.

Registration Fee: 100€. Five to ten registration fee waivers will be available for selected students that don’t have specific funds to support participation and/or to members of the Portuguese Society of Ecology (SPECO). Waiver requests are available in the registration form. Fee payment details will be given by email to each participant after acceptance notification.

Requirements: Own laptop with R and RStudio installed (installation guidance will be provided, if needed). Some experience with programming languages, such as R or Python, would be beneficial but are not a requirement.

HOW TO REGISTER

Please fill the application form by July 31.