Cofactor has supported education and outreach in genomics since its inception through internships and even donating sequencing runs to classrooms. So when Professors Michael Goldwasser and Bryan Clair proposed bringing undergraduate students for a visit, we jumped at the chance to show off our field. We love talking about what's going on in the sequencing world, and it's even more fun to share it with students, many of whom might not have previously considered a career in genomics. The field is fertile ground for computer scientists to find interesting problems to work on. The proliferation of sequencing technologies available means there are now more active areas of research than ever, leading to expanded career opportunities for graduates with math and computer science degrees.

 So last week, almost 30 students from the Saint Louis University Math and Computer Science Club came over to Cofactor. Besides getting to see the latest sequencing machines and tour our lab space, they participated in a simulation of de novo assembly. We made small fragments of the opening paragraph of "A Tale of Two Cities" – duplicating them and introducing errors just like sequencing reads have – and printed them onto small strips of paper. By spreading them all out on a table and finding the overlapping bits, the students were able to "assemble" the fragments and recover the original sentences. Dr. Bryan Clair commented that working through a problem like this "definitely gave a taste of the complexity of the problems, and their mathematical nature. The students had fun and learned a lot, a very successful afternoon." 

We agree! Thanks to Bryan, Michael, and all the students for coming!