A joint international doctoral course on the subject "Employing genome-wide technologies for functional regulation in development and disease" between the RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies (RIKEN CLST), Yokohama, Japan and Karolinska Institutet Department of Cell and Molecular Biology (Sweden) will be held from February 24th to 28th, 2014 at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.

Its main purpose is to give doctoral students the possibility to learn about molecular biology from cutting-edge researchers from leading international research institutes. Doctoral students in medical, biological, or biology-related areas currently studying in graduate schools either in Sweden or Japan can participate. Students from Japanese universities can apply for participation now. The course will be held in an international environment with English as course language.

Applicants are screened and accepted based on suitability and motivation. Participants who successfully pass the course examination will receive a certificate of completion. No tuition is required.

Deadline for application for students from Japanese Universities is 2014-01-23 (The deadline has been extended)

No tuition. In principle, the participants pay for their travel, daily expenses and accommodation. 
- RIKEN CLST will be able to fund part of the travel costs for a limited number of students from Japanese Universities. Please explain in detail in your application why you will need travel support. The most eligible applications will be selected.

Functional regulation in non-disease cases and dysregulation in diseases at gene level (genomic variation (SNPs), transcriptional variation, transcriptional regulation, post-transcriptional modifications, epigenomics, methylation, ncRNA, protein level (post-translational modifications) and at metabolite level. Novel technologies in gene level and protein level studies. Understanding development and disease through genomic technologies.

More information can be found on the course website from Karolinska Institutet here.

Dr. Piero Carninci
RIKEN Yokohama Institute, Center for Life Science Technologies
web: http://www.riken.jp/en/research/labs/clst/genom_tech/life_sci_accel/transcript_tech/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/carninci 

Dr. Carsten Daub
RIKEN Yokohama Institute
Karolinska Institutet
web: http://ki.se/en/people/cardau

Dr. Aki Minoda
RIKEN Yokohama Institute, Center for Life Science Technologies
web: http://www.riken.jp/en/research/labs/clst/genom_tech/omics_app_tech/epigen_tech/

Dr. Jessica Lindvall
Karolinska Institutet
web: http://www.bils.se/staff/jessica-lindvall/

Prof. Lukas Käll
Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden)
web: http://kaell.org/lukas/

Dr. Olga Hrydziuszko
Karolinska Institutet
web: http://se.linkedin.com/pub/olga-hrydziuszko/33/32b/a57

Dr. Timo Lassmann
RIKEN Yokohama Institute, Center for Life Science Technologies
web: http://www.riken.jp/en/research/labs/clst/genom_tech/life_sci_accel/genom_algo/

Dr. Charles Plessy
RIKEN Yokohama Institute, Center for Life Science Technologies
web: http://www.riken.jp/en/research/labs/clst/genom_tech/life_sci_accel/genom_mini/ 

List of past lecturers can be found here.

The course consists of lectures, discussion and seminars. The discussions and seminars are compulsory. Absence from compulsory parts is compensated according to the instructions from the course leader.

The students will be examined for knowledge and skills, individually based on the active participation in discussions and group-wise with seminar presentations.

The students are examined with both group-wise and individual presentations in English. The students will work in small groups of 2-3 students. Each group will receive a scientific question related to the course topic on the first day of the course. Students are welcome to propose such a question for their own group. The content has to be related to the course topic. The scientific question will be answered and discussed by the students on the last day of the course during the course evaluation. Each group will be asked to make an oral presentation of the results and each student will present part of the results. The course lecturers will evaluate the performance of each of the students individually. Based on each students performance during the examination, it will be determined if the student pass the examination or not.

Students who successfully pass the examination will receive official certificates of completion from Karolinska Institutet. Special requirements for certificates from the students' university can be considered. Please contact the course administration before the course if any such requirements exist.

Dr. Carsten O. Daub, Karolinska Institute, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies
Dr. Piero Carninci, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies

Eligible applicants

Doctoral students (medical sciences, biology or related fields) currently enrolled in universities in Japan. Doctoral students enrolled at Universities outside Japan but working in Japanese research institutes can apply and are asked to clarify the details of their multiple affiliations in the application (what is the main location of their work? what is the nature of the association with the Japanese institute? etc.). The screening process for students from Swedish universities is already completed.

 Number of participants and screening procedures

The maximum number of participants from Japanese universities will be 10. Participants will be selected after screening of the application material by course directors and RIKEN CLST researchers involved in the course organization and teaching. The most important evaluation criterion is the statement of the motivation of attendance. Please explain why you are interested in participating, how the course relates to your current research and how your work will benefit from the course.

Application procedures

Apply for the course using this web form. Deadline is 2014-01-23 (The deadline has been extended)

Please understand that we expect the accepted applicants to attend to the course. Only in exceptional cases we can accept that a confirmed student will not attend to the course. Therefore we will ask the applicants to provide a letter of support signed by their supervisor.
For further questions regarding application procedures, please contact to application-info■gsc.riken.jp (■→@)or fax to 045 503 9216. 
Notification emails to all the applicants will be sent on 2014-01-29

Accommodation

Accommodation is basically arranged by the participants. Below is a list of youth hostels and hotels fairly close to the KI campus:

• Hostels:
  Stockholm Hostel
  Crafoord Place
  A1 Hostel Bed And Breakfast (or http://uk.hostelbedandbreakfast.com/ )
  City Hostel 
  More here: http://g.co/maps/yrzfj

• Hotels: 
  Hotel Oden 
  Hotell Nortull
  More here: http://g.co/maps/4mb4w

GWAS 2014 Course Secretariat RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies, Division of Genomic Technologies 
RIKEN Yokohama Institute
1-7-22, Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama, 230-0045 JAPAN 
Tel: +81-(0)45-503-9222 　 Fax: +81-(0)45-503-9216 
General inquiries: ki_riken_course■gsc.riken.jp(■→@) 
Application Inquiries: application-info■gsc.riken.jp (■→@)
(Please note in the Email subject line that your query is about GWAS 2014)