7th RSG-Türkiye Student Symposium

The 7th RSG-Türkiye Student Symposium was held online on 24 and 25 October 2020, as a satellite meeting of HIBIT 2020 and the first edition the pandemic forced onto a screen. Yasin Kaya chaired it and opened with a presentation of the group and its year.

Dr. Abdullah Kahraman of University Hospital Zurich gave the first day’s keynote, “Is bioinformatics worth it?”. Three students selected by the HIBIT 2020 scientific committee presented their work across the two days: Selim Kalaycı on ProNetView-ccRCC, a visual exploration portal for clear cell renal carcinoma proteogenomics networks; Esra Başaran on the impact of pan-cancer mutation profiles on signalling pathways through phosphorylation events; and Eda Şamiloğlu on modelling designer mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 and ACE2 interaction, with a short HADDOCK tutorial. Dr. Pınar Pir of Gebze Technical University opened the second day with “How to avoid learning statistics?”.

Three workshops ran alongside the talks: “Introduction to R programming” by Etka Yapar, “Machine learning with R programming” by Ulaş Işıldak, and “Data visualization with ggplot” by Melike Dönertaş. Both lunch breaks were given over to open networking sessions, with microphones unmuted and prepared questions on bioinformatics and on graduate study to get people started. Participants asked for the format to come back.

The symposium reached 350 attendees over the two days. Poster prizes were presented by Dr. Stuart James Lucas on behalf of the HIBIT scientific committee. Running it cost nothing: HIBIT’s Zoom Webinar account carried the whole event.