Ta-da!

[liv]

Just want to show off one of the big projects my team has been working on for the past several months:

Pathogen Genomics: A New Era

This is part of our huge-scale Covid training project, but we've decided that in 2023 people need to know about other infectious diseases as well. So this is a broad-ranging MOOC about how to use pathogen genome sequencing in an applied way, from scaling up to national and international epi/pandemic response, to getting politicians to take into account the science when making decisions about public health.

The intended target audience is people involved in pathogen surveillance and public health in some way, but anyone broadly scientifically literate (and we've all found ourselves learning technical stuff about epidemiology in the last three years) should get something out of it. If you're scared by the term "surveillance", it does very much include discussions of how to balance keeping close track of viruses while maintaining the privacy and freedom of the human hosts. And a ton of very honest accounts from people working at the frontline over the past 40 months, discussing what their work was like in the real world and the trade-offs they had to make.

It's taking a really international view; our big aim here is to move away from the model where we talk about Europe and the US with one little token case study from the Global South. So even if you know quite a lot about what went down in North America and how that was different from Australia and China, you might learn something about cutting edge public health in Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Nigeria and lots of other places.

The course is completely paid for by our funders (including the FCDO and the Wellcome Trust) so if you do sign up you get the full benefits of paid membership for free. In theory it's supposed to take about 3 weeks but anyone who signs up can access the course for a year. There's no problem with just dipping in rather than taking the course in linear order. It's not as slick as, say, a TEDTalk but it's real and honest views from some of the people who really know most about what's changed since Covid, including some of the people responsible for the advances.

I'm really proud of it; of all the things I've achieved in my career this project is probably most directly relevant to saving lives and changing the world. My direct report did most of the coordinating but what's good about it is that it really has been a team effort and a massive collaboration. Also I rather like the slightly Star Wars vibe of the title!

Comments

[misbegotten]

It's so shiny and welcoming, yet serious and informative! Congrats!

[liv]

Aww, what a great description, I'm so glad it comes across that way.

[cesy]

Hooray!

[anais_pf]

Very cool! I am tempted to try making my way through the course. I'm not the intended target audience but I am broadly scientifically literate . . . I think.

[liv]

I think you'd enjoy it. The assumed level of knowledge is that you know what a virus genome is and why sequencing it is relevant to public health decisions; you don't need to know about the mechanics of how the sequencing actually happens or the detailed biology of viruses and how they cause disease. Even if you're a bit confused about virus sequencing there's a lot of discussions like, should we close all the borders when a new variant is reported? If we make all our data public that will help scientists, but maybe accidentally breach someone's confidentiality, so what's the ethical approach? How do we get politicians to actually pay attention to the science? How do we deal with media distortion and misinformation? If you think you could have a sensible opinion about those kinds of questions, you probably won't find the course too "sciencey".

[watersword]

Congratulations!

[chayarose]

Oh! This looks very interesting!

[mathcathy]

It looks so interesting! Well done.

And my business analyst brain found the typo on the front page (week 3 description):
"Understand how to communicate scientific data efficietly"

I thought you'd want to know. Even proof readers go word blind sometimes.

[liv]

Thank you so much for spotting the typo! As it happens that particular section of the front page is generated in a way that sits outside our proofreading process so I think we would have just missed it.

Really glad to hear it looks interesting; we definitely want to attract people with a general interest in the topic as well as people actually working in public health and pathogen surveillance.

[mathcathy]

It really does and so professionally done. It looks invitingly credible.

[hairyears]

Shiny!

This pushes all of my buttons for the excitement of seeing applied in society: theory and laboratory and daily life and policy.

[wildeabandon]

This sounds super awesome, and I've put a link to it to come up in my to-do list once I've finished my A-levels and am allowed to do new things again ;)

[ofearthandstars]

How cool! It sounds really interesting!

[lokifan]

Oh wow! Very cool. This isn't the first time I've heard about the Wellcome Trust doing interesting Covid stuff.