Mirco Wölfelschneider

The de.NBI Winter School on “Computational Metabolomics” took place from the 5th until the 8th of March 2018 at the Leucorea in the snowy Lutherstadt Wittenberg. The training event organized by the Center for Integrative Bioinformatics (CIBI) was the first of its kind. The well-structured course designed to gain a good understanding of the possibilities and limitations of bioinformatics software for metabolome data analysis attracted an audience of 29 mainly young scientists from a broad range of different disciplines.

The course contained several interesting lectures covering the main aspects from a basic introduction into the field over the computational processing of raw data up to the final analyses. The lectures alternated with hands-on sessions building up on the previously mediated knowledge by introducing the usage of different metabolomics tools (OpenMS, Galaxy, MetFrag etc.). The lectures were given by de.NBI speakers and renowned European experts in the field, e.g. Etienne Thévenot (CEA, F), Pablo Moreno (EMBL-EBI, UK) and Egon Willighagen (Maastricht University, NL). This intensive program took place from the morning until the mid-afternoon followed by short project presentations of the participants with subsequent discussions. During the las evening the presentation section was held by an expert in the field of metabolomics working in the industry for several decades followed by a question round giving us the opportunity to ask all kinds of questions.

The lectures and hands-on sessions gave all participants the chance to broaden as well as strengthen their knowledge in the topic on a very detailed manner. Moreover, the nice atmosphere emphasized all the participants to ask for help whenever needed and thanks to great expertise of the team almost all issues could be solved immediately.

Besides the scientific part, the organizers did a great job carrying the good atmosphere from the lecture hall into the rest of the stay. An organized city tour, group dinners and informal discussion rounds in the library or the nearby pub helped to connect with the colleagues beyond the course itself.

To summarise the de.NBI Winter School on “Computational Metabolomics” in one sentence: I can simply recommend this program to any young scientist ranging from Master students over PhD candidates and also PostDocs who are already working with metabolomics. For those who are working with large datasets the follow up training program by de.NBI with the Summer School “Riding the Data Life Cycle”, 3-7 September 2018 in Braunschweig, could be a nice option. Last but not least, I would like to thank my supervisors who supported my participation in the course.