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Are you a UK-based doctoral student who is keen to further develop your skills? The Doctoral Landscape Training Network (DLTN) is a network of UKRI-funded doctoral training programmes that aims to provide advanced training in research skills for students enrolled in doctoral research, particularly students enrolled in UKRI-funded programmes.
On this site you can find details of upcoming courses currently offered by DLTN programmes and partner organisations. If you wish to apply to join a course, please: Ensure that you meet any prerequisites for the course you are applying for. Seek approval to apply to a course from your supervisory team. Ensure that you have access to funding to meet any associated costs.
If you are a UKRI-funded training provider and wish to advertise a course or training opportunity via the DLTN please complete the form available here.
Upcoming Courses:
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Introduction to sequencing data and quality control - 3 & 5 November 2026 (2-day course)
Location: online
Registration deadline: 20 October 2026
There are 3 sequencing technologies that are heavily used for biological research; Illumina, PacBio, and ONT. These three technologies each have their own errors and biases. At the end of this course you will understand these error profiles, and be able to use command line tools to measure sequencing quality and conduct quality control.
Due to our funding restrictions, we must prioritise researchers working within the NERC remit who are currently in a UK Higher Education institution at minimally PhD student level; only 30 places are available so please only register if you intend on attending.
The course is free; registrants will be advised two weeks prior to the course whether they have been selected and Zoom / Slack links shared ahead of the course; register to NEOF monthly newsletter for further info on free training (https://neof.org.uk/news/)
Course certificate can be issued upon request.
If you have any queries regarding this training, please contact neoftraining@sheffield.ac.uk
Registration Form
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A beginners course in High Parameter Flow Cytometry Data Analysis - 4-5 November 2026
Location - in person: Department of Biology, University of York
Pre-requisites: 1) Your own laptop with Python installed (instructions will be provided). 2) An understanding the basic principles of flow cytometry compensation, plotting fcs data and conventional gating data analysis.
This course is designed to train beginners how to undertake high dimensional flow cytometric analysis. This will be a practical based course with the theory and concepts behind dimensionality reduction and clustering in a manner that is relevant and practical to cytometerists.
No programming experience is required, and so this will be a greater way to remove the barriers to undertaking and supporting deeper flow analysis. It will teach how to use python and flow cytometry analysis software FCS Express (De Novo, Dotmatcs) and will go through the practice as well as the pre-processing tasks required for analysis pipelines.
At the end of the course you should have an understanding of the associated mathematical algorithms, which algorithms to choose, what they illustrate about the data set and how to integrate Python scripts into the FCS Express flow cytometry analysis software. Thanks to our collaborator De Novo Software for helping make this course possible.
Registration Link
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R Primer for omics - 24 & 26 November 2026 (2-day course)
Location: online
Registration deadline: 09 November 2026
R is a highly used programming language for visualisation of data and statistical analysis. There are many R packages for the analysis of biological datasets. This course is aimed at beginners and novices to R. It will give an in depth overview of the foundations of R and Rstudio plus introduce data sorting, visualisation and statistical analysis.
Due to our funding restrictions, we must prioritise researchers working within the NERC remit who are currently in a UK Higher Education institution at minimally PhD student level; only 30 places are available so please only register if you intend on attending.
The course is free; registrants will be advised two weeks prior to the course whether they have been selected and Zoom / Slack links shared ahead of the course; register to NEOF monthly newsletter for further info on free training (https://neof.org.uk/news/)
Course certificate can be issued upon request.
If you have any queries regarding this training, please contact neoftraining@sheffield.ac.uk
Registration Form
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Python for Bioinformatics - 08 & 10 December 2026 (2-day course)
Location: online
Registration deadline: 23 November 2026
Python is one of the most popular programming languages for bioinformatics and data analysis in general. It is a very flexible language with countless applications in the manipulation and processing of data files. This course is aimed at Python beginners and will give you transferable skills to manipulate your own data and experience in Python modules tailored specifically for bioinformatics and genomics analyses.
Due to our funding restrictions, we must prioritise researchers working within the NERC remit who are currently in a UK Higher Education institution at minimally PhD student level; only 30 places are available so please only register if you intend on attending.
The course is free; registrants will be advised two weeks prior to the course whether they have been selected and Zoom / Slack links shared ahead of the course; register to NEOF monthly newsletter for further info on free training (https://neof.org.uk/news/)
Course certificate can be issued upon request.
If you have any queries regarding this training, please contact neoftraining@sheffield.ac.uk
Registration Form
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Bacterial 16S metabarcoding - 12 & 14 January 2027 (2-day course)
Location: online
Registration deadline: 12noon, 14 December 2026
Sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene is a well established method of determining the bacterial taxonomic composition of microbiomes. This has been used for human and animal body sites, soil, sewage, clouds, deserts, permafrost and many other environments. This course will give you the ability to describe the advantages and disadvantages of 16S rRNA sequencing, and analyse 16S rRNA datasets with the QIIME2 bioinformatics platform.
Due to our funding restrictions, we must prioritise researchers working within the NERC remit who are currently in a UK Higher Education institution at minimally PhD student level; only 30 places are available so please only register if you intend on attending.
The course is free; if accepted on the course, your place will be confirmed in the days following the deadline (Monday 14/12/2026)
Register to NEOF mailing list to hear first about future NEOF free bioinformatics courses: (https://neof.org.uk/news/)
Course certificate can be issued upon request.
If you have any queries regarding this training, please contact neoftraining@sheffield.ac.uk
Registration Form
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Mapping and Modelling your Biological Pathway - 01 February 2027
Location: in-person, University of Dundee (room tbc)
The event is free of charge. There are no booking restrictions, first come first served, 5 places available.
Participants will:
- Explain the conceptual reasons to use formal modelling in a biological investigation
- Locate biological pathway diagrams and dynamic models in public, online resources
- Edit a pathway diagram in the standard, graphical language SBGN, suitable for a Supplementary Figure.
- Distinguish the structure of a small regulatory network from its parameter values, using each concept to understand (explain and predict) a dynamic pattern of biological regulation.
- Obtain timeseries simulation results, from a gene network model in the standard SBML format.
Full description available at the registration link.
Catering will be provided. Small travel bursary may be available, contact eastbio@ed.ac.uk to enquire.
Course certificate can be issued upon request.
If you have any queries regarding this training, please contact eastbio@ed.ac.uk
Registration Link
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Metabarcoding for diet analysis and environmental DNA - 02 & 04 February 2027 (2-day course)
Location: online
Registration deadline: 12noon, 18 January 2027
Sequencing DNA barcodes from mixed sources of DNA is an increasingly used way to survey biodiversity, whether analysing dietary content from faecal-derived DNA or monitoring aquatic species from water-derived DNA. This course will give an overview of metabarcoding with different barcoding genes to target particular taxa. Using an example data set we will go from raw sequence data through to assigning taxonomy to the sequence variants.
Due to our funding restrictions, we must prioritise researchers working within the NERC remit who are currently in a UK Higher Education institution at minimally PhD student level; only 30 places are available so please only register if you intend on attending.
The course is free; if accepted on the course, your place will be confirmed in the days following the deadline (Monday 18/01/2027)
Register to NEOF mailing list to hear first about future NEOF free bioinformatics courses: (https://neof.org.uk/news/)
Course certificate can be issued upon request.
If you have any queries regarding this training, please contact neoftraining@sheffield.ac.uk
Registration Form
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Microbial Shotgun Genomics - 23 & 25 February 2027 (2-day course)
Location: online
Registration deadline: 12noon, 08 February 2027
There are many unknown and unculturable microbes found in a vast array of different environments. Shotgun metagenomics is an approach to capture all the genetic information in a sample, providing the taxonomic and metabolic information of all present organisms. In this course we will analyse shotgun metagenomic sequencing data from stool samples to compare western and Korean diets. At the end of the course you will be able to quantify the taxonomic composition with Kraken2 & Bracken, and determine the metabolic profile with the bioBakery suite of tools.
Due to our funding restrictions, we must prioritise researchers working within the NERC remit who are currently in a UK Higher Education institution at minimally PhD student level; only 30 places are available so please only register if you intend on attending.
The course is free; if accepted on the course, your place will be confirmed in the days following the deadline (Monday 08/02/2027)
Register to NEOF mailing list to hear first about future NEOF free bioinformatics courses: (https://neof.org.uk/news/)
Course certificate can be issued upon request.
If you have any queries regarding this training, please contact neoftraining@sheffield.ac.uk
Registration Form
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Community Analysis in R - 16 & 18 March 2027 (2-day course)
Location: online
Registration deadline: 12noon, 01 March 2027
A lot of different analysis and visualisations can be carried out with community data. This includes taxonomy and functional abundance tables from 16S rRNA and Shotgun metagenomics analysis. This workshop will introduce you to the phyloseq R object; a specialised object containing an abundance, taxonomy, and metadata table. You will learn how to import your data into a phyloseq object, analyse your data and produce bespoke visualisations in R with the packages qiime2R, phyloseq, and microbiome.
Due to our funding restrictions, we must prioritise researchers working within the NERC remit who are currently in a UK Higher Education institution at minimally PhD student level; only 30 places are available so please only register if you intend on attending.
The course is free; if accepted on the course, your place will be confirmed in the days following the deadline (Monday 01/03/2027)
Register to NEOF mailing list to hear first about future NEOF free bioinformatics courses: (https://neof.org.uk/news/)
Course certificate can be issued upon request.
If you have any queries regarding this training, please contact neoftraining@sheffield.ac.uk
Registration Form
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Proteomics & Mass Spectrometry - 23 March 2027
Location: in-person, Moredun Research Institute
The event is free of charge. There are no booking restrictions, first come first served, 5 places available.
This course will cover the basic principles of proteomics and mass spectrometry. Commonly used proteomic workflows will be discussed and a range of mass spectrometry instrumentation explored. Applied examples will be used to give context and demonstrate outputs. Participants will be introduced to a range of software tools routinely used to analyse and interpret mass spec data in the Proteomics facility, including the open source MaxQuant and Perseus applications. There will also be a tour of the Moredun Proteomics facility to allow participants to see the instrumentation in operation.
Full description available at the registration link.
Catering will be provided. Small travel bursary may be available, contact eastbio@ed.ac.uk to enquire.
Course certificate can be issued upon request.
If you have any queries regarding this training, please contact eastbio@ed.ac.uk
Registration Link
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Population Genomics - 27 & 29 April 2027 (2-day course)
Location: online
Registration deadline: 12noon, 12 April 2027
This course will introduce participants to a variety of population genomics analyses for large next generation sequencing (NGS) datasets. It will include discussion on single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) calling and filtering options, an introduction to population genomics statistics, examining genetic structure, and Fst-based analyses such as outlier detection/genomic islands of divergence.
Due to our funding restrictions, we must prioritise researchers working within the NERC remit who are currently in a UK Higher Education institution at minimally PhD student level; only 30 places are available so please only register if you intend on attending.
The course is free; if accepted on the course, your place will be confirmed in the days following the deadline (Monday 12/04/2027)
Register to NEOF mailing list to hear first about future NEOF free bioinformatics courses: (https://neof.org.uk/news/)
Course certificate can be issued upon request.
If you have any queries regarding this training, please contact neoftraining@sheffield.ac.uk
Registration Form
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