Meet-U is a collaborative pedagogical and research initiative between several Universities of Paris area. The course is intended to Master students (2nd year) in Bioinformatics. Students are grouped in teams of 4-5 and realize a project from A to Z to answer an ambitious biological question. An open meeting day is organized at the end of the course to gather the scientific community and showcase students' projects.

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Students have to develop an algorithm/program that integrates the theoretical knowledge and technical skills they acquired during their formation to apply them to a concrete problem in Biology. They are guided through all the steps of a project realization, from conception to validation. They learn how to use popular tools for collaborative work, how to collectively conduct a project, and how to exploit cloud computing resources.

Students are in "coopetition": they collaborate within each team and teams compete with each other. Meet-U represents a unique opportunity for them to become actors of a research community and present their work to their scientific peers (jury of researchers). Meet-U also helps them develop their creativity and autonomy and create a network for their professional career.

For the research community, Meet-U is the occasion of exchanging on a common topic, becoming collectively aware of the "local forces" and increasing its visibility in the participating universities and beyond.

The subject/theme of the project and the pedagogical teams will be renewed every couple of years. This will ensure that Meet-U covers different aspects of computational biology, is in constant evolution and stays lively.

To learn more about Meet-U: Abdollahi et al. (2018) PLOS Computational Biology.