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                            (Ed.)
                        
                    
            
                            The publication of the first human genome in 2001 transformed biomedical research. Since then, an explosion of new sequencing technologies has required engineers and computer scientists to invent computational methods to analyze and interpret the ever-growing data. Now, large-scale biological data encompasses many types of ‘omics’ datasets, including genomes, transcriptomes, proteomes and metabolomes, and each of these new datasets has created a new set of analytical challenges. To meet this need, the field of bioinformatics has expanded significantly, but there is still a large need for engineers and scientists to work in this inherently interdisciplinary field. Properly trained bioinformaticians have expertise in computer science/engineering and understand the biological and medical context underlying their work. Therefore, the development of robust bioinformatics training programs is critical to educate the next generation of bioinformaticians. Although undergraduate degree programs in bioinformatics exist, providing students with hands-on bioinformatics skills through immersive research experiences is necessary to prepare students for graduate work. Thus, this work describes a recently funded NSF – International Research Experience for Students (IRES) site: US-Sweden Clinical Bioinformatics Research Training Program targeted at training students from diverse educational backgrounds to prepare them for authentic bioinformatics research experiences. Given the inherent interdisciplinary nature of bioinformatics, it is extremely difficult to design a training program that prepares students from different backgrounds (computer science, bioengineering, computational biology, biology) to be successful in a bioinformatics research group. Therefore, this ‘Work-in-Progress’ describes the pre-departure training program developed for this IRES site and the initial lessons learned. 
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