Teaching
Winter Semester: Data Analysis and Visualization
Introduction to planning of field experiments and their analysis. Introduction to statistics and to statistical software „R“: exploratory data analysis and visualization of data, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance, regression. Introduction to research data management. Introduction to system analysis and modeling.
Winter Semester: Applied Bioinformatics
This practical course develops basic scientific computing skills and apply them to a standard use case in bioinformatics, RNA-seq data analysis. We analyze a Next Generation Sequencing dataset measuring genome-wide gene expression.
Summer Semester: Molecular Crop Science Project 1
For the profile (Schwerpunkt) Molecular Crop Science, two projects are obligatory. Students work in one of the associated labs on a small research project. The content of the individual research project is as diverse as the research subjects of the participating lecturers, which include Plant Breeding, Molecular Biology of the Rhizosphere, Molecular Phytomedicine, Crop Functional Genomics, Crop Bioinformatics, Chemical Signalling and Molecular Biotechnology. Independent of the chosen project the course will provide key information about concepts in molecular analysis of crops which includes basic knowledge of tools and experimental strategies used in molecular crop siences. The research project will be regularly discussed in tutorials and the outcome presented in oral form in a research seminar of the participating laboratories with a poster presentation at the end of the project.
Winter Semester: Molecular Crop Science Project 2
For the profile (Schwerpunkt) Molecular Crop Science, two projects are obligatory. Students work in one of the associated labs on a small research project. The content of the individual research projects are as diverse as the research subjects of the participating groups, which include Plant Breeding, Molecular Biology of the Rhizosphere, Molecular Phytomedicine, Crop Functional Genomics, Crop Bioinformatics, Chemical Signalling, Plant Nutrition and Molecular Biotechnology. Independent of the chosen project the course will provide key information about concepts in molecular analysis of crops which includes basic knowledge of tools and experimental strategies used in molecular crop sciences. The research project will be regularly discussed with the supervisor and the outcome presented in oral form in a research seminar of the supervising lab and a minisymposium of all project students at the end of the semester. A written report needs to be completed in accordance with research documentation practices of the hosting lab.
Summer Semester: Crop Functional Genomics
Lecture on organization, function, mapping and sequencing of genes and genomes and the structure and dissection of transcriptomes and proteomes. Lectures are accompanied by homework assignments. These assignments will be discussed in exercise sessions. The module will be completed by a literature seminar on selected current topics of crop functional genomics.
Advanced scientific writing and communication
For all students that participate in this 'frame module':
- Lectures to teach literature search, scientific reading, "dos and don'ts" in scientific presentation and proposal writing
Specific for individual project groups:
- Introductory lectures into research topic (e.g. 'recent advances in plant nutrition'), short overview of recent developments in the field
- Presentation of a high profile orginal research paper by each student with short own critical points on the paper followed by a public discussion of paper and presentation
- Development of a research proposal based on the presented research paper
- Peer review panel on individual research proposal by students ('Übungen' in subgroups with supervisor)
- Public defense of research proposal and public defense of peer review (i.e. each student has three presentations: orginal paper and grant proposal on 'own paper' and review of another students grant proposal)
After a successful completion of the course, the students...
- obtain an overview of a specific research field.
- learn and apply softskills on literature search, scientific reading, presentation and proposal writing.
- peer review of a grant proposal.
- communicate and discuss findings and evaluations with colleagues/other students.
- develop own grant proposal.
BIGS Land & Food
The Bonn International Graduate School at the Agricultural Faculty was established in 2008 as "Theodor-Brinkman-Gaduate School" and the study program was initiated in winter term 2008/09. In 2020 it was renamed to its current name.
Bachelor & Master Projects
Don't hesitate to contact us if you want to do the project for your Bachelor or Master thesis in our group.
NGS-CN virtual autumn school
As part of the NGS-CN virtual autumn school, we are presenting a hands-on training for RNAseq and differential gene expression analysis. Find the instructions for the practical here.