Funding (2019 - 2023)

Core Funding

Core funding for the Australian BioCommons project in the 2019-2023 period came from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) via Bioplatforms Australia, which is subcontracted to The University of Melbourne as the lead agent.

This funding covered:

• 100% of Leadership, Community Engagement, Training Management, Operations, Communications and International Engagement activities undertaken by the Coordination Hub

• 100% of the funding for a small number of core national bioinformatics services including the Bioplatforms Australia Data Portal

• 50% of the funding to operate the national Galaxy Australia service. QCIF, Melbourne Bioinformatics and AARNet contributed the remaining 50% of the operational costs

• 25% of the funding to extend several core national bioinformatics services, ie. the “BYO Data Analysis Environments” which included the Galaxy Australia service, associated “command line services”, and the Apollo Portal service. The following institutions collectively contributed 50% funding towards this activity: University of Melbourne (Melbourne Bioinformatics), QCIF, University of Sydney, AARNet, NCI and Pawsey. The remaining 25% of funds were sourced via NCRIS through ARDC ‘Platforms’ Funding (see below)

• 33% of the funding to support the Human Genomes Platform Project. The following institutions matched the 33% funding provided by BioCommons: University of Melbourne (University of Melbourne Centre for Cancer Research [UMCCR]), Children’s Cancer Institute, Garvan Institute for Medical Research, QIMR Berghofer Institute for Medical Research, NCI and AAF. The remaining 33% of funds was sourced via NCRIS through ARDC ‘Platforms’ funding (see below).

Other investment

The BioCommons Coordination Hub actively identifies additional sources of funds which can be used to leverage the Bioplatforms Australia investment. During 2019-2023 this included:

• NCRIS funding via the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), where the BioCommons Hub coordinated two successful submissions to Open Calls by ARDC:

  • 2019 ARDC Platforms Call - “BioCommons Bring Your Own Data (BYOD) Expansion Project”

  • 2020 ARDC Platforms Call - “Global technologies and standards for sharing human genomics research data”

• ARDC (via the Data Retention Phase 2 program) contributed funds to help maintain nationally significant reference datasets generated via the Bioplatforms Australia Framework Initiatives which are housed in Bioplatforms Australia’s Data Portal

• The Australian BioCommons Queensland Node (part of Bioplatforms Australia's Queensland Node) received co-investment from the Queensland Government through the Research Infrastructure Co-investment Fund (RICF) 2019-23 round.

In-kind contributions

In-kind contributions were made by multiple partner organisations through:

• Provision of computational resource to underpin various services by University of Melbourne (Melbourne Bioinformatics), QCIF, University of Queensland Research Computing Centre, NCI, Pawsey and ARDC Nectar Research Cloud

• Trainer and Facilitator time and effort towards our Bioinformatics Training Cooperative and broader Bioinformatics Training Program.