Australia's inaugural nf-core Hackathon Outpost boosts local Nextflow capability
The first-ever Australian satellite site of the international nf-core Hackathon has just taken place in Sydney. Seventeen participants from across the country came together to collaborate on cutting-edge Nextflow projects. This marked a significant step in strengthening Australia’s Nextflow and nf-core community, fostering new collaborations between researchers, bioinformaticians, and Nextflow enthusiasts.
International registrations for the 2025 nf-core Hackathon almost reached 1000, with about half opting to join remotely and the remainder spread across 44 sites globally. The organisers were thrilled to finally have an Australian site. Thanks to our time zone, we were among the first to kick off each day of asynchronous work, along with colleagues across the ditch in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Australian BioCommons arranged for key participants including multiple Nextflow Ambassadors from multiple cities to join our local hosts, Sydney Informatics Hub at the University of Sydney. Participants represented Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, National Computational Infrastructure, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, QCIF, Queensland University of Technology, Sydney Informatics Hub, University of NSW, and Australian BioCommons.
The group spent three days at Moore College, a fantastic venue with an open workspace and an expansive terrace with city views - providing an ideal setting for focused work, brainstorming, and cross-team collaboration. While the hackathon was all about accelerating nf-core developments, it was also a valuable chance for collaboration outside of participants’ regular networks. Seqera sponsored our working lunches, but the Newtown cafe and restaurant scene ensured participants stayed well-fueled throughout the whole hackathon!
Over the course of three productive days the group divided up to tackle key projects in Nextflow development, including:
Working towards a new release of the nf-core ProteinFold pipeline;
Developing a Nextflow for HPC training for Australia’s national supercomputers, NCI’s Gadi HPC and Pawsey’s Setonix HPC;
A nf-test working group to write and apply unit tests to existing institutional pipelines.
As well as progressing some locally important projects, the gathering was a great opportunity to discuss Nextflow training collaborations and how we can work together to ensure more Australians can access the Nextflow skills and resources they need. Keep an eye on our training events listings to see the outcome of these new national relationships.
We are so grateful to the Seqera team and the nf-core community for their enthusiasm and efforts to welcome the Australian satellite site of the hackathon. And massive thanks to the participants who contributed their time and energy to make this event both productive and fun! With the success of this first Australian outpost, we’re already looking forward to next year’s nf-core Hackathon.