RTrainer is an innovative educational tool designed to develop essential skills in bioinformatics analysis, for use in the R language in the scientific community. Developed in 2023 by Denis Puthier of the TAGC in Marseille (an associate team of the French Institute of Bioinformatics – IFB), RTrainer has been available for self-training since March 2025 thanks to a collaboration.
Developed in 2023 by Denis Puthier of the TAGC in Marseille (an associated team of the French Institute of Bioinformatics – IFB), RTrainer has been available for self-training since March 2025 thanks to a collaboration with the IFB-core teams. Indeed, Julien Seiler of the NNCR cluster and Lucie Khamvongsa of the training team jointly ported this solution to the IFB cluster’s Open OnDemand portal.
This application offers a progressive path to learn the R language, with an emphasis on practice.
This new application makes learning the R language more accessible, progressive and interactive, even for beginners (without installation). Indeed, this application is installed on the IFB’s digital infrastructure, allowing for serene use on any type of machine, in terms of administration rights or its resource capacities.
In addition to the collection of dynamic tutorials available on the application, the IFB training team is preparing documentation to easily use this new tool.
Why use Rtrainer instead of RStudio?
RTrainer covers key concepts of the R language and thus allows self-learning. RStudio is the work environment (IDE) that allows you to carry out and facilitate analyses and development in R.
Who is R-Trainer designed for?
RTrainer is primarily aimed at biologists without prior programming experience, students in bioinformatics and life sciences, but also at researchers wishing to improve their skills in data analysis using R.
Available for free provided you have an account on the IFB cluster. To learn more and test RTrainer, visit the IFB cluster’s Open OnDemand portal .
Don’t have an account on the IFB-core cluster yet to use the IFB’s digital infrastructure? Would you like to facilitate your analyses and have access to numerous free resources: computing, storage space, technical and community support? Don’t hesitate any longer and create your account on the cluster .