Who we are
Lifescitrainers.org is a way to connect anyone and everyone who does short-format training (workshops, boot camps, short-courses, etc.) in the life sciences. This site is a place to share resources, advice, and conversation – all in the service of improving our teaching and our careers.
Why short-format training?
In many areas of the life sciences new technologies and approaches (especially, but not only computational ones) are changing rapidly. It’s not possible for formal training (undergraduate/graduate) to keep pace, but short-format training can fill these gaps. Short-format training comes with its own set of challenges, and this community works together to address them.
How to join
Membership is open to all trainers who serve researchers and educators in the life sciences
Most of the community is active on Slack (online chat forum).
This site is new, but as we grow we will host member posts on training content and videos of online meetups and presentations. You can also join the trainer’s registry and/or post a biography.
- Join the Slack


Q1/Q2 Community Calls 2023
The primary goal for every meeting is exchange – what experience can you share with others that might open them up to a new way of thinking about and doing training?

How to Train FAIR (Miniseries)
How can those who deliver professional development training enhance their training materials FAIR? What resources and tips are available to develop and deliver training for professionals, researchers, students, and others who would like to make their work more FAIR?

Q3/Q4 Community Calls 2022
The primary goal for every meeting is exchange – what experience can you share with others that might open them up to a new way of thinking about and doing training?

September 2022: FAIR & Open Research 4 Beginners; Return of Fall 2022 Community Calls.
Future generations of scientists will benefit from early introduction of Open and FAIR principles. By providing a general understanding of sound, open, transparent, and reproducible research principles and inspiring students we will gain a positive and real change in the academic culture ultimately leading to better research.

July 2022: Community Discussion – The Bicycle Principles for Effective, Inclusive, and Career-spanning Short-Format Training
The Bicycle Principles assemble education science and community experience into a framework for improving short-format training. This community call will discuss these Principles and an accompanying set of 14 recommendations to implement and develop solutions.

How I Teach Life Scientists…by Using Reproducible and Scalable Learning Environments
The combination of Docker + cloud computing service enables a teacher to create a highly scalable and flexible learning environment