Abstract

The Regional Student Group Turkey (RSG-Turkey) is officially associated with the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Student Council (SC). At the RSG-Turkey, we aim to contribute to the early-career researchers in computational biology and bioinformatics fields by providing opportunities for improving their academic and technical skills in the field. Over the last ten years, we have built a well-known student-driven academic society in Turkey that organizes numerous events every year and continues to grow with over 650 current members. Celebrating the 10th anniversary of RSG-Turkey, in this communication, we share our experiences, five main lessons we learned, and the steps to establish a long-standing academic community: having a clear mission, building a robust structure, effective communication, turning challenges into opportunities, and building collaborations. We believe that our experiences can help students and academics establish long-standing communities in fast-developing areas like bioinformatics.

Highlights

  • The Regional Student Group Turkey (RSG-Turkey) is a member of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Student Council (SC) and is a non-profit community consisting of early-career researchers interested in computational biology

  • Throughout our ten-year-long journey, we observed that our overall mission and values, community structure, tools for effective communication and project management, proactive mindset, and collaborations were key to our success

  • We believe that being part of an academic society and experiencing this in the early years facilitate the development of soft skills required in research, provide self-confidence and motivation, and contribute to collaborative research culture

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Summary

Introduction

The Regional Student Group Turkey (RSG-Turkey) is a member of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Student Council (SC) and is a non-profit community consisting of early-career researchers interested in computational biology. ISCB-SC is a global community that assists with the development of computational biologists by promoting and offering scientific events, networking opportunities, training, and educational resources.[1,2,3] RSGs were initiated to promote computational biology and events in local geographical regions.[4] Today, there are more than 30 RSGs worldwide and they organize local events but interact and are part of a large network.[5] Following the principle that “unity makes strength”, i.e., greater things can be achieved by teamwork and collaboration, RSG-Turkey was seeded in December 2011 to bring young computational biologists together. Our community aims to provide a framework to share the knowledge and experience across institutions and promote collaborations within and beyond Turkey towards open science goals

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