The Biomarker Hunt: A Research Data Challenge

Join us for a three-night immersive research training experience at UNR at Lake Tahoe. Accepted participants will receive complimentary lodging and meals throughout the program.

The Biomarker Hunt is a collaborative research challenge where undergraduate and graduate students work in teams to analyze real transcriptomics (RNA-seq) and proteomics (DIA) datasets using modern computational biology approaches.

Rather than following step-by-step tutorials, participants learn by doing. making analytical decisions, exploring large datasets, troubleshooting challenges, developing biological hypotheses, and communicating their discoveries. The program emphasizes creativity, critical thinking, reproducible research, data visualization, and scientific communication while introducing participants to multi-omics data analysis.

Throughout the challenge, teams will perform quality control, identify differentially expressed genes and proteins, investigate biological pathways, explore candidate biomarkers, and integrate transcriptomic and proteomic results to answer authentic research questions.

The program concludes with a three-minute team flash talk, where participants present their findings. Awards recognize creativity, innovation, analytical thinking, effective data visualization, and scientific communication.

Required background: Basic R programming experience and an introductory understanding of statistics. Undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines are welcome.