The Single-cell Transcriptomics + Lung Cell Characterization VTP was a great way to get an exposure to this analysis. scRNA-seq analysis is an involved, multistep process, but MILRD’s program provided a ton of support and I came away from the project with a strong initial foundation. Participants learn the rationale, inputs and outputs of each computational step, and experiment-specific considerations that go into designing, executing and analyzing single-cell transcriptomics projects. I left feeling like I have a strong foundation in scRNA-seq that I can build off of. I had a great experience with MILRD’s VTP program.

I enrolled in the Single-cell Transcriptomics + Habenula Neuron Characterization VTP to learn about scRNA-seq analysis with the intention of applying it to my own research to characterize olfactory neurons in mosquitoes.

The project was super edifying: I learned a lot about the principals—and nuance—of scRNA-seq analysis and its applications to cellular neurobiology. This VTP was really critical in better understanding the insights that scRNAseq can offer, and in evaluating it’s strengths and weaknesses in strategizing how to best use it in my PhD project.

I also found the VTP workload/schedule to be accomplishable/flexible, which was important given my time-commitments as a graduate student.

I found the program and its structure to be interesting and useful. I had not had experience with bioinformatics of any kind, but the mentors guided me through the analyses and had interesting information about metagenomics.

The part I liked best was how they patiently answered my many questions along the way. It was a good primer to start learning about bioinformatics and linux terminal.

I enrolled myself and three of my lab members in the metagenomics VTP. We all loved the project and program! 

Based on the experience, I included Milrd as a collaborator in a recent grant submission to virtualize multiple projects from the submission. I’m excited for students to learn about our work and to help trainees reproduce our analyses and apply the methods to their own research.

I really enjoyed Social Mobility VTP. The detailed feedback and willingness to share knowledge made this a one of a kind learning experience. It was also my first exposure to R! I loved getting a firsthand glance into meaningful work through the Opportunity Atlas; the integration of R made me appreciate the wide applications of coding. This was a valuable opportunity—thank you again!

I took the metagenomics VTP, and liked it so much I referred a friend and served as an assistant mentor. The program gave me a clear review of metagenomic data analysis pipelines and Command Line basics, which I can apply to my dissertation research in the years to come.

Milrd staff gave me personalized assistance throughout the process, and in just a week’s time I felt competent in the VTP subject matter. I would highly recommend Milrd’s metagenomics VTP to any participant who needs quick and efficient hands-on training in genomics or related fields.

I had a great experience with the Milrd’s Metagenomics Virtual Training Project. The context of the project was highly interesting and relevant, and as I had little experience with bioinformatics, Linux/Bash or R, it was easy to follow and rewarding. I learnt a lot about a research domain I was completely unfamiliar with. I’m excited to apply the skills I learned to other areas of biomedical research in the future.

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience working with Milrd! Despite my limited prior experience with R and bioinformatics in general, their mentors and resources were there every step of the way to help me fully understand each command, so I knew exactly what I was doing. After completing the project, I even got to be an assistant mentor for a cohort with college students working on the same project I did, which actually taught me even more about the topics. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to participate in this project!

After attending several workshops on metagenomic analysis, I felt like my needs weren’t completely met…that I still didn’t grasp the process of analyzing such a large dataset. This virtual training project has exposed me to new software and pipelines that I can’t wait to implement in my own research!

I also enjoyed the program’s structure—it was flexible and convenient—and am excited to enroll in other projects to learn new methods.

Milrd gave me real world experience working with bioinformatic tools which allowed me to make an informed decision to pursue the field for my graduate degree! I believe projects such as the metagenomics VTP project can give insight into how powerful these tools can be for all kinds of research.

They were very supportive and helpful along the way, making it a program that I would even recommend to people who have had no previous experience doing this kind of work.

The over all structure of the virtual training project was great, the staff was very supportive and knowledgeable along the way and provided answer to the smallest questions I had. Overall, I would recommend the program!!

I had a great time completing Milrd’s Social Mobility Virtual Training Project. I learned how to look at a broad collection of data, understand the contents and use programming to describe trends within it. It was the first time I was exposed to programming and the R language…I loved it and I can’t wait to do more work using these tools. It was also cool to learn about economics research, which I didn’t have previous experience in. I’m excited to complete more projects with Milrd.

I have been working with single-cell data from mouse models. I enrolled in the Single-cell Transcriptomics + Lung Characterization VTP to clarify some of my questions regarding the analysis of scRNA-seq data and to better understand tools like Seurat to implement in my work…

…MILRD’s platform allowed clarification of specific tools and filtering steps to use in my future projects. I also enjoyed connecting with other participants across various experience levels.

Between the cloud-hosted platform, easy-to-follow scripts, and mentorship support, MILRD provided great resources in this VTP. I have recommended other people to the program and even offered to Assistant Mentor in future cohorts

I enrolled in the Single-cell Transcriptomics + Habenula Neuron Characterization VTP to learn about scRNA-seq analysis, with an eye toward pursuing it in my own research. I had no previous expertise in this area, and the experience was great.

I have already found it helpful for interpreting results in papers utilizing scRNA-seq data. I’m still determining whether I’ll be using it in my own work, but the VTP provided a good introduction to scRNA-seq concepts and analysis techniques—and I feel confident that I would know how to start exploring my own scRNA-seq data.

I also really liked the flexibility of MILRD’s VTP Program. It was the right mix of videoconference chat and asynchronous feedback/collaboration, and I comfortably completed the project as a full-time post-doc (and mom of a 1-year-old).

I was eager to complete the Economics + Social Mobility Analysis VTP—an opportunity I was provided via the Dallas Fed—because I’m starting my Master’s in Economics and want exposure to computational and analytical techniques in the field. I also hope to apply programming skills I learned from this project in R to my work at the Fed, where I am continuing to work while pursuing my studies.

It was a short but sweet project that taught me more about cleaning data in R and drawing statistical inferences from them. It was a fun week and a very interactive project overall. I particularly enjoyed interacting with staff from Opportunity Insights to learn more about how they use the Opportunity Atlas data to discuss attributes of a locale with its elected officials. Not only did this course teach me about data science, but it also taught me more about economic mobility across different areas of the country.

I took the Economics + Social Mobility Analysis VTP and really enjoyed the project. I was familiar with Raj Chetty’s work research and was interested to learn more about his research and the experimental methods employed. In addition, I was excited to work in RStudio. I have experience in SAS, STATA and EViews but not R.

In particular, I really appreciated the exposure to R. It was set up in a way that allowed folks with little-to-no experience with the programming language to participate and excel.

I found that even with my experience, this project was still a challenge. The size of the data set allowed for a lot of exploration and experimentation. MILRD did a great job curating the project for each educational level.

I participated in the Single-cell Transcriptomics + Habenula Neuron Characterization VTP, and found it to be a wonderful supplement to my high school STEM curriculum.

My favorite part of the course was being surrounded by people who were eager to learn, and who were much more experienced than I! It certainly made for a busy week, but it was a great way to learn; I found that the wide variety of resources I had to work with provided the right amount of scaffolding and opportunity for independent thinking considering it was my first time working with R and bioinformatics software libraries.

Seeing others’ questions and results, and being able to troubleshoot and get feedback from the mentors through a combination of the AI platform, asynchronous group channel and zoom cohort meetings resulted in a deeper understanding of single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis and was a rewarding experience.

I thought the project was really informative, and it was really helpful to get help on issues I ran into as quickly as I did!