IBU - Strategy Day - Fast Forward into the Future
At this year's Strategy, we set the course for the future of IBU. Primarily, we want to achieve better results for our customers faster. That is why we have drawn up a plan for how we will optimize our work processes through a deep but data-secure implementation of AI. We will also increase our presence in the digital and real world to bring our unique skills and opportunities at the University of Bern more into focus. Last but not least, we want to do everything we can to remain at the forefront of the Swiss educational landscape in the Master's degree programs in bioinformatics.
Award for Laura Voitl at the Basel Computational Biology Conference
Congratulations, dear Laura! Laura R. Voitl, PhD student from the Livestock Genetics team at the Institute of Genetics, which collaborates with the Interfaculty Bioinformatics Unit (IBU), won a prize for her poster at the Basel Computational Biology Conference (BC2) on September 10, 2025. The prize was awarded for her contribution to the National Science Foundation study entitled "Identifying Genetic Variants for a Mendelian Trait using Long Read Sequencing in Three Domestic Animal Species", which she conducted together with Anna Letko, Rémy Bruggmann and Cord Drögemüller.
Science is Fun! Nacht der Forschung 2025
When science makes children's and adults' eyes light up, it's Nacht der Forschung at the University of Bern. We were there with our "Lego & Strawberries" project. Numerous children and adults joined us and were able to extract DNA from a berry smoothie using simple household items (salt, washing-up liquid, coffee filters, etc.). And what do you do with such DNA? You run it through the Lego sequencer and see which fruit the DNA matches.
New OpenProject Features: simplifying collaboration with customers
The IBU collaborates on numerous projects with various partners each year, so we are committed to continuously improving our project management. Recently, we hired a software engineer to customize a plugin for OpenProject that specifically addresses our unit's unique requirements. With these improvements, our customers will benefit from a more comprehensive project overview, streamlined reporting capabilities, and a simplified project initiation process at the IBU.
More details will follow next month.
NOMIC: a hub for omics data analysis of non-model organisms
Many researchers within the university work with non-model organisms (i.e. not human or mouse). However, performing data analysis on data from such organisms poses many challenges. IBU received funding to set up a hub to encourage knowledge exchange and support such challenging but important projects. The project will start in January 2025. Already interested? Contact David Francisco (david.francisco@unibe.ch).
Thomas Roder's OpenGenomeBrowser Wins SIB Innovative Resource Award at [BC]² Conference!
Thomas Roder, IBU staff scientist, has been honoured with the prestigious Innovative Resource Award from the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics at the [BC]² Conference. The award honours Thomas’s outstanding contribution to the field of comparative genomics through the development of the software OpenGenomeBrowser.
It comes with a generous cash prize of 10,000 CHF to support continued development of the software.
