A Practical Intro­duction to NGS Data Analysis and Variant Calling (February 24–26, 2026 in Munich)

Advance your research with the core skills to under­stand NGS data, spot common pitfalls, and run essential first analyses yourself — step-by-step, beginner-friendly, and fully hands-on.

In a nutshell

• Build the essential Linux command-line skills used in everyday NGS bioin­for­matics
• Under­stand key NGS concepts: technology, algorithms, and file formats (FASTQ, BAM, VCF)
• Use widely adopted open-source tools to process and inspect sequencing data
• Perform first downstream analyses to study genetic variation (variant calling & filtering)

This workshop is designed to give you a solid, practical under­standing of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) with a clear focus on the bioin­for­matics steps that most often determine whether an analysis is trust­worthy.

You will learn how to assess your own NGS data, identify common problems and error sources, and complete a first downstream analysis workflow, including DNA variant calling.

In the course we work with a real-life Illumina NGS dataset.

After 3 days, you will be able to:

• Evaluate raw sequencing data (FASTQ) using quality control best practices
• Perform prepro­cessing (adapter clipping, quality trimming) and under­stand why you do it
• Map reads to a reference genome and interpret mapping quality (SAM/BAM)
• Inspect alignments in IGV/UCSC to validate findings
• Generate and interpret a VCF, apply basic filtering, and avoid common pitfalls

read more and/or apply