Eduardo Hernández recently attended the EMBL-EBI training course “Single-cell RNA analysis with Python” and received one of our fee waivers to help him attend the course. Here he talks about how receiving support to attend the course has impacted his work.

What and where are you studying/working?

I’m a bioinformatician from Cuba, studying for my PhD at the Center of Molecular Immunology in Havana. I did my undergraduate studies in Bioinformatics Engineering at the University of Informatics Sciences, where I also work part-time as a professor.

I’m committed to the study of the signaling process of interleukin-2, and several muteins derived from it. My focus is on the phenotype changes of CD8+ T cells and regulatory T cells treated with those muteins, so the single cell resolution is needed to study the specific cell populations.  That is the reason why I’m studying scRNA-seq data analysis.

What motivated you to apply for the course? 

Another professor from the University of Informatics Sciences told me about the European Bioinformatics Institute courses and sent me the details of this one via LinkedIn. Before I took the course, I was trying to learn about single cell technologies and analysis on my own, so when I saw a course from such a prestigious institution, I knew I had to apply. Of course, the fee waiver provided was a huge motivation as the blockade we face in Cuba does not let us pay for courses anywhere.

How will you apply the learnings from the course in your future work/study?

I’m already applying some of the skills I got from the course. Although it is a bit complicated to assimilate all the knowledge taught there, my data processing workflow has improved a lot, as I am now much more prepared to face the common issues in data from single cell technologies. I’m also currently preparing a single cell mini-course for the University of Informatics Sciences. That course will help to spread the knowledge learned to future generations of Cuban bioinformaticians.

EMBL-EBI offers the opportunity to apply for financial assistance for all of our virtual and onsite courses. Take a look at our course list, where you can find more information about financial assistance under the “additional information” tab on each course website.