The Computer committee organised the second Bioinformatics Workshop during February 13-16, 2017 at the ICICI Multipurpose hall, IWSA Headquarters, Vashi, Navi Mumbai in collaboration with Mumbai based Bencos Research Solutions Pvt Ltd, a next generation sequencing service provider. The workshop was titled `Bioinformatics: RNA Sequence Data Analysis’ and was advertised on the IWSA website, Vashi Times, and all national institutions in Mumbai. A total of 32 participants from ACTREC, BARC, NIRRH, NIV (Pune), S P Patkar College and D Y Patil University attended this advanced hands-on biocomputation course. The coordinator from IWSA was Dr Rita Mukhopadhyaya and the course was conducted by Dr. Konrad Forstner and Thorsten Bischler- visitors from the Institute of Molecular Infection Biology in Wurzburg, Germany. The four day workshop was divided into: ‘Introduction to next generation sequencing platforms and file formats required for data storage and analysis’ on Day 1, ‘Overview of READemption RNA Seq Analysis pipeline’ on Day 2, ‘Training on Linux command lines’ on Day 3 and ‘Shell scripting and data analysis’ on the final day.

The workshop was preceded by a short inaugural function presided over by IWSA executive committee members and other invitees. The Valedictory function on the final day was presided over by Dr. Sharmila Mande, TCS, Pune and other IWSA members. They listened to the feedback from participants who had also a written individual questionnaire that was submitted by all participants to Dr Konrad. The guest speaker delivered a lecture titled `Microbiome and health management’.

All participants felt the workshop could have been extended to 6 days for complete satisfaction from the learning experience that was unique and skilfully challenging for all.

This workshop was self-sustaining as it was managed with the registration fee paid by the participants. Two undergraduate students were provided complimentary participation.