"Telling Stories Through Data" Workshop January 20 - February 26, 2026 Six-week virtual workshop (no cost for all selected participants) 1.5hrs on Tues/Thurs, from 3pm - 4:30pm US Eastern Time Workshop Website: https://bit.ly/TSTD2026 Apply to participate (form closes on Saturday January 10, 2026): https://forms.gle/dvvWxhi7YU2ATZx58 The TSTD workshop series is designed to foster practical skills in both bioinformatics and science communication, training participants in how to "tell stories through data." This six-week virtual workshop 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. 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. The 2026 TSTD workshop will be focused on host-associated microbiome datasets (e.g. Holobiont metagenomes, MAGs, bacterial isolates, and/or host-associated metabarcoding profiles). Application to participate in the "Telling Stories Through Data" 2026 virtual (Zoom) workshop, to be held January 20 - February 26, 2026. Virtual workshop sessions will be held over 6 weeks on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3pm - 4:30pm US Eastern Time. A full workshop description and provisional schedule is available at the main workshop website: https://github.com/BikLab/Stories-Thru-Data-Workshops-Virtual This application from will close on Saturday January 10th, 2026 at 11:59PM US Eastern Time. All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application the week of January 17th. Due to space and funding constraints, this year's workshop will be capped at 20 participants. This virtual workshop is FREE for all selected participants, and funded through an NSF CAREER award to Holly Bik at UGA (DEB-2144304). Holly Bik Associate Director, Institute of Bioinformatics (IoB) Associate Professor, Department of Marine Sciences & IoB University of Georgia 102B Marine Sciences Bldg 325 Sanford Drive Athens, GA 30602 Email: hbik@uga.edu Office: (+1) 706-542-2844 Lab: (+1) 706-542-2037 Lab: https://www.biklab.org/ BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/hollybik.bsky.social Holly M Bik (to subscribe/unsubscribe the EvolDir send mail to golding@mcmaster.ca)