Schedule: Two 1.5 hour Zoom sessions per week, Tuesdays and Thursdays 3pm - 4:30pm US Eastern Time (New York City time zone)
Application Form: https://forms.gle/dvvWxhi7YU2ATZx58 form closes Saturday January 10, 2026 at 11:59PM US Eastern Time
Applications to participate will close on Saturday January 10th, and selected participants will be notified of acceptance the following week (week of January 12th). Due to space and funding constraints, this year's workshop will be capped at 20 participants. This virutal workshop is FREE for all selected participants.
This workshop is targeted towards graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, although we will consider applications from other early-career scientists who would especially benefit from participating. All participants are expected to have some basic familiarity with command line tools and scientific programming (e.g. Unix, R, and/or Python) in order to fully benefit from the workshop trainings. This is NOT an introductory programming course; we will focusing on running -Omics workflows and downstream data visualizations of target datasets.
Any questions about this workshop should be directed to Holly Bik at UGA (lead organizer and NSF grant PI) - hbik@uga.edu
This workshop series is designed to foster practical skills in both bioinformatics and science communication, training participants in how to “tell stories through data.” Most practicing researchers do not have formal training in storytelling or science communication. Yet, evidence has shown that storytelling is a persuasive communication tool because humans connect with the narrative format more than isolated facts (Dahlstrom 2014). Storytelling can be defined as “how to convey ideas to a specific audience using evidence and narrative”, and since this process involves a formal underlying structure (Reagan et al. 2016), it is equally useful for both scientific manuscripts and public outreach materials.
"Telling Stories Through Data" workshops will be centered around two overarching questions: How do you find the story? and What do you do with the story? Data Visualization sessions (led by Holly Bik) will focus on how these questions are applied to -Omics data analyses, guiding participants in how to visualize data, convey statistical analyses and uncertainty, and build narratives for scientific manuscripts. Science Communication sessions (led by Virginia Schutte) will provide complementary training on storytelling for public audiences, teaching participants how to identify compelling public narratives and prepare science outreach products.
We anticipate a number of discrete outputs from each workshop. First, participants will carry out -Omics analyses focused on their own datasets, with a goal of identifying a story they can tell through a set of data visualization products (maps, plots, analyses, etc). Over the course of the workshop, we will iterate through different versions of figures and visuals, and participants will get regular feedback on how to improve their storytelling and scintific narrative. Each participant will develop their own set of scripts and software packages that will be applicable to their own research questions. Secondly, participants will develop parallel science communication products (e.g. infographics, drawings, videos, photographs, etc.) that can be disseminated through various digial platforms (BlueSky, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.) or used for in-person public outreach events.
This is a series of three summer workshops funded through Holly Bik's CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation DEB-2144304. The data analysis focus of each year's workshop is as follows:
2026 - Host-Associated Microbiome data analysis (storytelling focus: Holobiont metagenomes and MAGs; host-associated bacterial isolates; host-associated metabarcoding profiles)
2027 - Phylogenomics (storytelling focus: phylogenetic trees, evolutionary relationships, organism-focused transcriptomics and genome skimming)
Dataset Focus: Host-Associated Microbiomes
Week 1 - Cohort Introductions; The good, the bad, and the ugly; key tools and platforms
- Tuesday January 20, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Data Visualization)
- Thursday January 22, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Science Communication)
Week 2 - Telling a story and making a point
- Tuesday January 27, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Data Visualization)
- Thursday January 229, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Science Communication)
Week 3 - Color, aesthetics, and branding
- Tuesday February 3, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Data Visualization)
- Thursday February 5, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Science Communication)
Week 4 - A tour of scientific visualization - plots, maps, and data-driven storytelling
- Tuesday February 10, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Data Visualization)
- Thursday February 12, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Science Communication)
Week 5 - Accessibility and telling your story in different ways
- Tuesday February 17, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Data Visualization)
- Thursday February 19, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Science Communication)
Week 6 - Final presentations and group feedback
- Tuesday February 24, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Data Visualization)
- Thursday February 26, 3pm-4:30pm US Eastern Time (Science Communication)