We did it: the 1st BioHackathon Europe - Australian Outpost

We hosted the inaugural Australian Outpost of the BioHackathon Europe last month. A group of 12 researchers and research infrastructure specialists came together in Melbourne to work through the night on strategic projects with our international peers.

A range of people representing University of Adelaide, Melbourne Bioinformatics, University of Melbourne, Galaxy Australia, QCIF, University of Queensland, University of the Sunshine Coast, Southern Cross University, Intersect, BioCommons and ARDC worked from 7pm onwards to coincide with the Paris attendees on 7-11 Nov 2022.  We worked on two projects: Building a robust and reproducible assembly and annotation pipeline for non-model eukaryote genomes and Training booster: developing FAIR training materials and Learning Paths. We checked in regularly with another two Aussies who were working from home on different projects too.

In the assembly and annotation project, a mix of Galaxy and non-Galaxy people tested workflows and did quality control on pipelines related to the Vertebrate Genomes Project. New processes were documented, new datasets loaded and a new Galaxy workbench for genome assembly was significantly advanced. In the training booster project, a national group of training professionals contributed to a global handbook on making training materials FAIR and were exposed to writing learning pathways for new domain specific training.

While the two groups worked long nights and made good progress on the projects, there were many other benefits. New connections were made internationally and at the local gathering, with lots of meetings between people who had only exchanged emails before. Others extended their professional network across organisations, domains, hierarchy and borders. We also had summer hail storms, a complete lunar eclipse and (arguably) the best croissants in the world from the award-winning Lune.

The feedback on the BioHackathon Europe - Australian Outpost has been fantastic. The organisers at ELIXIR were keen to assist our contributions and the support during the live event from the hundreds of participants was welcoming and generous. We are particularly grateful to our enthusiastic biohackers who embraced the opportunity and were tired but thrilled to take part.

Keep an eye out for the call out for next year’s event!