A space dedicated to transdisciplinarity has just opened at FdS: BILL for Bioinformatics Learning Lab

With the support of MUSE (Take-Off#2) and the Montpellier Faculty of Science, an innovative interdisciplinary learning laboratory is being set up to encourage interaction between students from different backgrounds by combining their skills.

To this end, a teaching team (Anna-Sophie Fiston-Lavier/Dept. Informatique, Anne-Sophie Gosselin/Dept. Biologie-Mécanismes du Vivant, Mélanie Debiais-Thibaud/Dept. Biologie Ecologie and Jean-Christophe Avarre/researcher IRD-ISEM) is actively setting up a collaborative space dedicated to the extraction, sequencing and analysis of DNA from samples collected in the field or from laboratory experiments. This space is made up of molecular biology lab rooms and bioinformatics rooms, all modular and innovative, in the Faculty of Science's new Building 35.

The aim of this space is to encourage and facilitate creative teaching practices, foster collective intelligence and enable students to play an active role in their training, by focusing on the realization of joint projects by students from courses that are currently too compartmentalized (Ecology, Microbiology and Bioinformatics). In this context, the BILL project aims to strengthen transdisciplinarity by connecting several courses at the Faculty of Science, and by decompartmentalizing the skills and knowledge of students and teachers.
In this dedicated space, undergraduate and graduate students from 3 teaching departments (Computer Science - Master BCD (Mention Bioinformatique), Biology Life Mechanisms - Master IMHE and Biology Ecology - Licence EBO/EDEN) will generate and analyze biological data themselves, to answer a single scientific question together. The dynamic, multi-disciplinary teaching team, made up of teacher-researchers, researchers and technicians, will support them all the way through to commercialization (writing of international scientific publications) and dissemination of the results obtained (communications at conferences, popularization among the general public).

The BILL teaching team