BioExcel Webinar #50: Using competencies to guide training and professional development

Life Science research has become increasingly digital and has a direct influence on our daily life in areas such as health and medical applications, drug discovery, agriculture and food industry. It is one of the largest and fastest growing communities in need of high-end computing, leading to an increasing number of life science researchers who are not computing experts but who need to use complicated computationally intensive biomolecular modelling tools. High quality training is required to enable researchers to use computational tools. 

A competency framework can be used to define the areas of training needs and develop a training programme based on it. A competency is an observable ability of any professional, integrating multiple components such as knowledge, skills and behaviours. BioExcel has developed a competency framework that lists the competencies for professionals in the field of computational biomolecular research. This framework also enables the definition of different profiles within its field of application, which can help people identify the abilities they need for a specific role, e.g. computational chemist, and therefore, inform their career choices and professional development.

The EMBL-EBI training team is involved in a number of projects that use competencies as the basis of their training programme. To provide a central and sustainable home for the generated competency framework the team has developed the competency hub to facilitate access to competency frameworks and relevant training resources and career profiles associated with them. The BioExcel framework is one of the driving use cases for the competency hub. We will demonstrate how users can obtain information from the website to guide their professional development.