{"id":265859,"date":"2026-06-11T14:46:48","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T13:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/?p=265859"},"modified":"2026-06-17T10:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T09:43:08","slug":"the-history-of-embl-ebi-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/2026\/06\/the-history-of-embl-ebi-training\/","title":{"rendered":"The history of EMBL-EBI Training"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This blog was put together by Rebecca Nicholl, Senior Marketing Manager for the Training team at EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute, supported by the personal archives and stories from our recently retired Head of Training, Cath Brooksbank.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As Cath Brooksbank retires after leading the training team at EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) for more than two decades, we’d like to reflect on how the programme evolved from a single training room into a globally recognised training initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September 1994, EMBL-EBI was firmly established in the UK. Here’s the timeline of Training at EMBL-EBI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2002: the start of on-site training<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2002, EMBL-EBI extended its first building, and in it, a bespoke training room, known as the Garden Room, was built. Featuring modern in-desk computers and breakout space for coffee and networking, the essence of on-site training was born. Training and outreach were overseen from the start by Cath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2003: introducing the off-site programme<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ensembl<\/a> (a public and open project providing access to genomes, annotations, tools and methods at EMBL-EBI) ran the first off-site workshop as part of the Wellcome Trust\u2019s Open Door Series in 2003, shaping what was to become the EMBL-EBI Training off-site programme. Other service-specific roadshows followed in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Pages
Pages from the first EMBL-EBI Training roadshow brochure in 2005. Image credit: Cath Brooksbank, EMBL-EBI<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2004: team expansion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As demand increased, the team expanded with the appointment of the first Scientific Training Officer to work alongside Cath and an Events Organiser, marking the beginning of a dedicated training team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2006: our first on-demand experiment <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside the Industry Partnerships<\/a> team, we answered the community call for on-demand training and started to experiment. Little did we know how huge this would become for the training programme twenty years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2007: hands-on training arrives on campus<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A growing team of trainers, event organisers, and IT professionals led to the creation of the core programme of hands-on training. 2007 marks the official launch of EMBL-EBI Training in our recognisable form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"EMBL-EBI
EMBL-EBI Training’s 2007 on-site course list.
Image credit: Cath Brooksbank, EMBL-EBI<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2009: the start of ELIXIR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Training team has been a fundamental part of the EMBL-EBI node of ELIXIR <\/a>since its inception. Planning phases, funding calls, and knowledge exchange are still at the heart of the node. The Training team is involved in helping shape training strategy and knowledge exchange across the European life sciences infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2011: on-demand training returns<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strengthened and renewed by interest from our community, we once again forayed into the world of self-paced, on-demand learning. From the beginning, we ensured that all training materials are open access under the Creative Commons ShareAlike license.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A trainee access a free, open access on-demand training course from EMBL-EBI Training. Image credit: Jeff Dowling\/EMBL-EBI.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2012: Train the Trainer (TtT) goes international<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our successful workshops, where we train the trainers of the future, saw massive interest and expansion in Australia. Their programme of TtT still runs to this day, and our partnerships around Australia are still as strong as ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2014: new training facilities and campus expansion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

EMBL-EBI and the training programme continued to grow. So much so that in 2014, we moved into our new building, with two bespoke training rooms dedicated to training. The Industry Partnerships team gave the Garden Room training suite a new lease of life for its own programme of events<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The EMBL-EBI South Building during construction. Image credit: Cath Brooksbank\/EMBL-EBI<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2015: webinars transform the training programme<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s hard to imagine our programme without the essential webinars. The first webinar series was launched in 2015 and has been running ever since. We run free weekly webinars<\/a> throughout the year, and two themed webinar series each year on top of that. Recent series have included spatial transcriptomics<\/a> and an in-depth guide to using the AlphaFold database<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A woman watches a screen of a live webinar hosted by EMBL-EBI Training. She is wearing large over ear headphones. Image credit: Jeff Dowling\/EMBL-EBI.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2017 \u2013<\/strong> 2022: capacity strengthening and pandemic-led adaptation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The six-year period that followed can be summarised by two C’s. CABANA and COVID. Under Cath’s leadership, our hugely successful capacity-strengthening model highlighted the need for equitable bioinformatics across the globe, and the CABANA project was launched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the flip side, none of us could have foreseen the COVID-19 pandemic. What could have been a closure of the training programme instead brought the opportunity to reach a more global audience, as we pivoted to delivering our bioinformatics training courses virtually. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2020, we’ve run courses either in-person or virtually using virtual machines, Slack, and Zoom to run the course and networking between our participants and have managed to deliver our training to a much more global audience as a result of this pivot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Delegates stand and look at a scientific poster fixed to a wooden wall. The poster has the title ‘Pandemic preparedness’. Image credit: Jeff Dowling\/EMBL-EBI.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

2022 \u2013 present: becoming more equitable and accessible across the world<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic taught us that making our training more accessible is the direction we want to be heading in as a team. We have grown our on-demand training catalogue<\/a> to an incredible 400+ pieces of open-access online content, introduced travel grants and fee waivers to ensure our live training is more easily accessed for more people, and continue to build on capacity strengthening across the world through our grants and partnerships such as CABANAnet<\/a> and BiotrAIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does the future hold?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our team and training programme have flourished under Cath Brooksbank’s leadership. We wish her good luck as she embarks upon her well-deserved retirement, and say thank you for the team and legacy she leaves behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking ahead to the future, we’re excited to see what modern challenges and opportunities bring to the world of bioinformatics training. From AI-led innovations to ecological and planetary challenges, we remain committed to delivering high-quality training in the data-driven life sciences for researchers around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A row of computers and desks at EMBL-EBI. Delegates sit at their computers and listen to talks during a live course on the Hinxton site. Image credit: Jeff Dowling\/EMBL-EBI.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Discover more from EMBL-EBI Training at www.ebi.ac.uk\/training <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever wondered how the EMBL-EBI Training programme began? Discover the history of the team and it’s offerings in this retrospective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":272461,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7644,1,7640],"tags":[8614,9802,12479,12539],"embl_taxonomy":[],"class_list":["post-265859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-behind-the-scenes","category-general","category-news-views","tag-embl-ebi-2","tag-embl-ebi-training","tag-embl-ebi-training-partners","tag-embl-ebi-training-team"],"acf":[],"embl_taxonomy_terms":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-content\/uploads\/history-of-the-programme.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265859"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273293,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265859\/revisions\/273293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265859"},{"taxonomy":"embl_taxonomy","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/about\/info\/course-and-conference-office\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/embl_taxonomy?post=265859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}