In partnership with the Philippine Genome Center with guest subject matter expert Dr. Jason Farlow of the Farlow Scientific Consulting Company, the One Health Bioinformatics and Grant Writing Workshop was held at PGC from April 23-26, 2019. The workshop funded by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency introduced core concepts in bioinformatics and provided easily accessible tools and reference data tailored to the needs of the attendees from the following institutions: Research Institute of Tropical Medicine, UP Los Banos College of Veterinary Medicine, UP Manila National Institutes of Health, Cebu Technological University, Mindanao State University (Iligan and Marawi), Ateneo de Manila University, Cavite State University, and DA Bureau of Animal Industry.
This skill building workshop aims to freely integrate available molecular data from global repositories that are pertinent to locally circulating pathogens and apply it to research areas of interest for the Biological Threat Reduction Program of the US government through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. At the end of the grant writing workshop, breakout groups brought together researchers from the animal and human health sectors with university professors from across the Philippines. Dr. Farlow and his team encouraged the participants to engage in research collaborations with the potential to lead to the development of white paper proposals through post-workshop mentorship activities now that they have an understanding of how surveillance data is generated and effectively used in research, response, and policy settings.
