Since 2005, Makerere University and the University of Dar es Salaaam have taken definitive steps toward the development and utilization of iLabs. This chapter presents the iLabs experiences of the two East African universities. The experiences presented here are characterized by: institutionalization of developer teams, development of ELVIS-based iLabs, staff & student exchanges, and utilization of iLabs to support curricula. The two universities have also undertaken to setup iLabs communities at peer universities and other higher institutions of learning in East Africa.
is a Research Engineer with the Center for Educational Computing Initiatives at MIT. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. Presently, he is involved with the management and development of online laboratories at MIT as well as the design and development of the iLab Shared Architecture. He is a member of the IEEE.
Summary: Many bioinformatics solutions suffer from the lack of usable interface/platform from which results can be analyzed and visualized. Overcoming this hurdle would allow for more widespread dissemination of bioinformatics algorithms within the biological and medical communities. The algorithms should be accessible without extensive technical support or programming knowledge. Here, we propose a dynamic wizard platform that provides users with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for most Java bioinformatics library toolkits. The application interface is generated in real-time based on the original source code. This platform lets developers focus on designing algorithms and biologists/physicians on testing hypotheses and analyzing results.Availability: The open source code can be downloaded from:
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