Rebecca Mahoney is a CRT student based at NUI Galway where she works on investigating polygenic risk in schizophrenia in Dr Derek Moris’s research group.
Rebecca has developed a 6-week course for the NUIG Youth Academy on DNA: The Data Inside Us.
The course is being taught to 2 classes of kids aged 10-12years and it focuses on introducing DNA and the core concepts of genetics before moving on to how data science techniques can be used to analyse DNA to study genetic variation among populations, look at our ancestors genomes and even use techniques like Google and Netflix use for personalising search results to predict traits. The course has both lecture and practical elements and uses a combination of video talks, homework and online Saturday practical activities such as learning the basics of python and using it to analyse data.
Overall Rebecca is providing her students with a fantastic introduction into the world of genomics, and how computer programming languages such as python can be used as tools to study our DNA.
Well done Rebecca!