On February 1, the São Paulo School of Advanced Science (SPSAS) started to receive applications for the short course on Hologenomic Data Analysis for Agriculture. The face-to-face course will take place between July 29 and August 9, in the city of São Carlos, in São Paulo state. Applications can be submitted by March 30 on the event's website. Forty applicants, 20 from Brazil and 20 from abroad, will be selected and have their participation fully funded. The selection results will be posted on April 16. The initiative aims to provide an interdisciplinary view of hologenomics and state-of-the-art knowledge on how to assess and integrate the analyses of different omics (genomics, metagenomics, epigenomic, transcriptomics, etc.). Furthermore, the school intends to discuss how these tools can improve the development of new agricultural management strategies. The School is organized by Embrapa Southeast Livestock, Embrapa Instrumentation and the São Carlos Institute of Chemistry (IQSC), with funding from the São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (FAPESP). It is also supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). The goal is to contribute to advancing knowledge and training students selected from Brazil and abroad through lectures, discussions and advanced analyses in bioinformatics. For that purpose, the course will have lecturers who are world references in their areas make presentations and conduct technical-scientific debates on the topic. On top of the theoretical content, participants will have practical lessons and field visits. For the course coordinator, the Embrapa Southeast Livestock researcher Luciana Regitano, climate change and other environmental factors create new challenges for agriculture. For instance, extreme climate events can affect food availability, productivity, and the incidence of pests and diseases in crops. “New approaches to improving health, productivity and sustainability are welcome to address these challenges. The use of increasingly more sophisticated technologies provides a more comprehensive view, allowing the development of interventions that will have an effect on health and agricultural productivity", she stated. "For example, artificial intelligence and language models, which will be addressed in the course, further enhance our ability to analyze the vast amounts of data generated by these approaches, accelerating the development of new treatments and management strategies to improve livestock productivity and sustainability, which can transform the food production industry with more efficient processes and more responsible and ecological production practices”, Luciana, who specializes in animal genetics, explains. The schedule includes metabolomics and microbiome characterization, incorporating such knowledge to genomic selection, analysis methods with machine learning, artificial intelligence, metabolomic data analysis-friendly software, and visits to research institutes and universities. Selection Participating students must be enrolled in undergraduate or postgraduate courses in Brazil or abroad. Postdoctoral fellows and young researchers can also apply. The selected students will have the opportunity to present their research results in poster sessions, and discuss the progress of their findings with participating scientists. In addition, selected students will have expenses paid by FAPESP. Click here to apply. Opportunity In order to expand discussions and interactions among professionals in the field, the schedule from July 29 to July 31 will be open to the public in general. A hundred additional vacancies will be available for students and researchers who are interested in participating in the lectures in that period. Registration for this specific three-day schedule slot will open in April.