Adding Australian life science research’s voice to global conversations

BioCommons attended this month’s ELIXIR All Hands Meeting in Amsterdam, presenting work on behalf of our national collaborators and sharing the Australian perspective on the common needs and challenges facing bioinformatics and computational infrastructures. The 8th ELIXIR All Hands meeting brought together members of the ELIXIR community from across the ELIXIR Nodes, as well as collaborators from partner organisations like BioCommons, to review in-flight activities and discuss plans for the future.

Nigel Ward, our Associate Director: Platforms was invited to speak at the ELIXIR International Impact Plenary, and presented details of the impact the BioCommons-ELIXIR Collaboration Strategy has yielded so far. Sharing how we do business resulted in a lot of interest (and tweets) amongst international peers about our unique approach. Feedback confirms that our efforts are well aligned and there are many opportunities for future collaborations.

The 'Science driven improvements to tools ecosystems' workshop investigated how infrastructures are evolving to support major science drivers, including biodiversity and COVID. Our Bioinformatics Engagement Officer, Johan Gustafsson was there to chair in person, with Nigel Ward. A raft of ELIXIR colleagues also presented in person, and additional Australian collaborators Sarah Beecroft from Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, Brian Davis from NCI Australia and BioCommons’ Steven Manos presenting virtually. The room was full of engaged delegates who wanted to investigate how to better support users and developers of workflows.

Human Genomics Data Specialist, Marion Shadbolt presented a poster on "National and international collaboration to facilitate human genomics data sharing in Australia: The Human Genomes Platform Project” on behalf of the BioCommons project involving Australia’s human genomics research leaders and national computing infrastructure partners. The poster detailing our collaborative work to leverage best practice technologies and global standards generated lots of great discussions and is now available on F1000Research.

The next opportunity for intensive engagement with our European network will be the BioHackathon Europe. We will soon open a call for expressions of interest to join us in (in Australia) to connect with BioHackathon teams in Paris in November - stay tuned!