Tiffany Grant, research informationist in the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, has been accepted into the Georgia Biomedical Informatics course to be held April 12-18, 2015.
Organized by the National Library of Medicine, this week-long survey course is designed to familiarize individuals with the application of computer technologies and information science in biomedicine and health science. Through a combination of lectures and hands-on computer exercises, participants will be introduced to the conceptual and technical components of biomedical informatics. Acceptance into the course is a competitive process. Kristen Burgess, UC Libraries’ assistant director for research and informatics, attended previously.
“As a fairly recent hire to a new position for UC Libraries, I would like to be able to offer more basic science workshops and services to researchers in the Academic Health Center,” said Grant. “The timing of this course is exceptional because as we continue to expand our Informatics Lab, and I begin to work on potential biomedical focused workshops, attendance in this course will give me a much more firm foundation. The course will help me expand my repertoire of bioinformatics tools and give me the confidence to navigate sites and interfaces that were once unfamiliar to me.”
In addition to providing Grant with valuable material and skills for her work, the information will be transferable to researchers especially in UC’s College of Medicine in that Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) will also be taught in this course. Grant and her colleagues are currently teaching a beginners REDCap class in the Health Sciences Library and are working on creating a hands-on advanced class. The information gained from the Biomedical Informatics course will no doubt enhance both of the beginners and advanced workshops.
Tiffany Grant earned her doctorate in 2009 in pathobiology and molecular medicine from UC’s College of Medicine. She worked as a post-doctoral fellow in infectious Diseases in the Internal Medicine department of the College of Medicine, and as a research fellow in the Infectious Diseases department of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Immediately prior to returning to UC as a faculty member, Dr. Grant was employed at Milacron, LLC as the supervisor of the microbiology department. She is one of four informationists working in UC Libraries. The term informationist refers to specialists in research data services. An informationist can be described as a hybrid of outreach librarian/embedded librarian and data librarian with a hint of data scientist.