Your bioinformatics certificate

This page explains how to get one, what it proves, and what it does not.

How to earn a certificate

Three steps, and there is no exam at the end.

1. Enrol on a course. Buy it on its own or open the whole library with a membership. Both routes issue the same certificates.

2. Complete every lesson. Our courses are set to strict completion, which means you have to work through the whole course rather than skip to the end. Where a course has quizzes, you need to pass them.

3. Download it. The certificate appears on your dashboard the moment the last lesson is marked complete. You download the PDF yourself and keep it.

There is no extra fee and no waiting period. The certificate is part of the course you already paid for.

What is on the certificate

• Your name, as it appears on your account
• The full course title
• The date you completed it
• A unique address that opens your certificate on our site, so an employer or supervisor can confirm it without asking you for anything

That last point is what separates a real certificate from an image anybody could make. The link resolves to our site and shows the same details.

Which courses give a certificate

All of them. Short specialist courses, the long hands-on trainings and the free introduction all issue one on completion, so you can finish a two-hour course and still have something to show for it.

If you take a learning path, you collect a certificate for each course in it rather than one for the path. Two courses, two certificates.

Can I get a bioinformatics certificate for free

Yes. Our Introduction to Bioinformatics costs nothing, needs no card and issues a certificate when you complete it. Over 1,900 people have taken it.

It is a genuine course rather than a sales demonstration, so the certificate means you worked through the material. If you want certificates in the harder subjects, those courses are paid.

What a course certificate is worth

Honesty helps here. A course certificate is not a degree and no employer treats it as one. What it does is show three things: that you chose to learn a specific skill, that you finished what you started, and roughly what you covered.

For a CV or a LinkedIn profile that matters most when the subject is specific. “Hands-on ATAC-Seq data analysis” tells a hiring manager something useful. A vague certificate in “data science” does not.

The other half of the answer is the work itself. Our hands-on courses finish with a pipeline you built on real data. In an interview, being able to talk through that pipeline carries more weight than the certificate attached to it. Take both.

Certificates that are worth collecting

If you are choosing where to start, these are the courses whose certificates name a skill an employer recognises.

A membership opens every course, so the number of certificates you can earn is limited only by the time you put in.

Common questions

Does the certificate expire?
No. Once issued it stays valid and the verification link keeps working.

Can I get a certificate without finishing the course?
No. Completion is checked lesson by lesson, which is the only thing that makes the certificate mean anything.

Is the certificate accredited?
It is issued by BioCode rather than a university or an accrediting body. It records what you completed with us. Anyone who tells you a short online course carries academic accreditation is overselling it.

Can my employer check it?
Yes. Every certificate has its own address on our site. Send them the link and they can see the name, course and date without contacting us.

How long does a course take to finish?
Short courses take a few hours. The large hands-on trainings take a few weeks at a few hours a week. You keep access either way, so there is no deadline to work against.