eLSAe-Learning for System Approaches
The Faculty of Maths, Computing and Technology, together with the Faculty of Science is part of a £1million consortium, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to develop SysMIC (Systems Training in Maths, Informatics and Computational Biology), a suite of web-based courses in the fundamentals of systems biology. The training will provide researchers from a traditional bioscience background with the mathematical and computational skills to undertake systems biology research. It is anticipated that over 1000 students will study the courses over the next five years, which will significantly impact on the ability of the UK to become a major international force in this dynamic science and its applications.
The courses will be delivered on the web and have a modular structure, offering three modules: from basic quantitative skills for systems biology level to more advanced. Module three will allow students to focus on their independent project work with a list of topics across the full scale within the BBSRC remit and application of a wide spectrum of mathematical and computational approaches.
The OU team is led by Prof Uwe Grimm, Maths and Statistics Department, with Dr David Morse (Computing) and Dr Rob Saunders (Biology).
The Systems Training in Maths, Informatics and Computational Biology (SySMIC) consortium, led by the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, UCL, creates a collaboration between UCL CoMPLEX, UCL Department of Computer Science and the Departments of Mathematics & Statistics, Computing and Life Sciences at The Open University, The School of Informatics and the Centre for Systems Biology at the University of Edinburgh, the Department of Biological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London and the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology at UCL/Birkbeck.