Workshops

04 Aug 2025 - 22 Aug 2025

The Biomedical Data Summer Programme (BDSA 2025) held at the Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University in collaboration with Yale University was officially completed on 22 August 2025. The summer programme was developed with the intention of training future leaders in the emerging field of biomedical data science.

Drawing on successful examples from the Big Data Summer Immersion at Yale University and the Big Data Summer Institute at the University of Michigan, the curriculum and content were developed for, and adapted to an Indian context, and jointly delivered by faculty from Ashoka University and faculty from Yale University.

There were three challenging weeks of bootcamps, mentored research experiences, and lectures series were scheduled from 4th - 22nd August 2025. The first week was a technical week of foundational work which allowed each of the participants the opportunity to engage in hands-on tutorial which included computational skill sets such as Unix, R programming, data manipulation, and visualization techniques. The second and third weeks of the program offered a series of lectures, where experts from Ashoka, Yale, Cornell, and the University of Cambridge, spoke on topics including biostatistics, genomics, epidemiology, biomedical imaging, machine learning, digital health, data ethics, and science communication. This was a unique opportunity for the students to experience first hand learning from the global leaders and also to raise discussions about the future of biomedical data sciences

Outside of the classrooms, the participants were organized into teams, and tasked with 5 projects where they would work collaboratively with real biomedical datasets, allowing them to employ their learning. The program concluded in a day-long symposium where each team presented their research findings and collaborative experiences to the invited speakers, faculty and peers.

The day also featured keynote talks by Dr. Partha P. Majumder, National Science Chair, Science and Engineering Board, Government of India, who spoke on how the field of genomics is playing a role in reconstructing human history, and Dr. Debasisa Mohanty, Director, National Institute of Immunology.

The Biomedical Data Summer Programme 2025 not only developed essential skills and new perspectives for the participants, but also contributed to interdisciplinary education and global health research collectively.