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New Developer Program

The Bioconductor New Developer Program is a group-mentorship/buddy program for would-be, new, or hesitant developers or for developers who wish to refresh their skills and would like to have mentorship in developing R scripts to a fully fledged Bioconductor package.

The goals of the program are to:

  • welcome and onboard new developers
  • develop educational material to assist new developers
  • strengthen community and interactions between Bioconductor developers
  • develop processes and resources that improve the quality of packages submitted to Bioconductor

Format

Each mentorship program cycle will run for one development cycle of Bioconductor package release (approximately 6 months), with the aim to submit a candidate package to the Bioconductor/Contributions GitHub repository with sufficient advance for review ahead of the following release deadline.

Note, mentors are not expected to be co-authors of the resulting package or any associated publication. As such, they also are not expected to contribute to the package in the form of code or documentation. Rather, they can be expected to provide expert advice on best practices and resources for the development and improvement of package functionality and coding practices. Any other agreement should be discussed between mentor, mentee, and their supervisor/line manager, if applicable.

Expression of interest

Join as a mentor (currently closed)

Mentors should have 2 or more R packages in Bioconductor (release or accepted in devel) and should be active in the Bioconductor developer community (for example active on the Bioconductor Slack chanel, or on the support site. Register your interest using this form.

Mentor applications for the 2021-2022 cycle of the Bioconductor Mentorship Programme have closed.

Join as a mentee (rolling basis)

Applicant Mentees should have a GitHub account and at least R scripts or a package in a public code repository (e.g., GitHub , Gitlab). The R code should demonstrate functionality and the applicant is applying for mentoring to package it into a Bioconductor package. The mentees should have ownership or explicit permission to use the code.

Mentee applications for the October 2021 - April 2022 pilot cycle of the Bioconductor Mentorship Programme have closed. All applicants will be contacted as soon as a decision is made.

Register your interest for future cycles of mentorship using this form.

Bioconductor values diversity and aims to build an inclusive, supportive and welcoming global community. Mentor and mentee developer applications from women, minorities, underrepresented group and individuals with disabilities or disadvantage are encouraged. We also welcome applications from developers who are transitioning between academic disciplines or software languages, who can bring new insights and perspectives.

New developer mentorships program committee

The New Developer Mentorship Program is a Bioconductor Community Advisory Board (CAB) initiative from by CAB members Kevin Rue-Albrecht, Mike Smith and Aedin Culhane.

Mentors (First Cycle, Nov 2021) TBA

We are excited to announce our first group of 6 mentors are Federico Marini, Alan O’Callaghan, Davide Risso, Kelly Street, Dario Strbenac, Nitesh Turaga.

More information

For more information about the program see the Bioconductor New Developer Mentorship and Assistance statement. For announcements or to contact the program, please message the team via the #developers-mentorship slack channel on Community-Bioc Slack.