Partners meet to start building the digital infrastructure needed for human genomics research though GUARDIANS
A diverse group came together, including special guest Dr Melissa Konopko from ELIXIR who is standing here with BioCommons’ Prof Bernie Pope.
Australian researchers are set to make significant strides in discovering, accessing, and analysing human genomics data. The first in-person meeting of a significant new collaboration brought together partners who are committed to implementing the Australian BioCommons’ GUARDIANS program.
The meeting in Sydney represented the start of two years of implementation work as part of the GUARDIANS mission to empower Australian researchers to easily and securely discover, access, analyse and use human genomics data across national infrastructure, using the latest tools and resources.
The project brings Australian BioCommons together with Australian Access Federation, Children's Cancer Institute / ZERO, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), QIMR Berghofer Institute of Medical Research, University of Melbourne, and University of Sydney. The project builds on years of foundational work in the Human Genomes Platform Project which also included a funded program and contracted schedules of work with partners.
This first GUARDIANS meeting helped to build a sense of shared purpose as the group established effective ways of working together across their diverse organisations. Explorations into the policies, processes, and technologies that will be required during the project were driven by the open exchange of ideas, and collaborative discussions on solutions to potential challenges.
Scientific Product Manager at ELIXIR, Dr Melissa Konopko, travelled from the UK to share her insights into the Genomic Data Infrastructure (GDI). There were many parallels to learn from this project which is enabling access to genomic and related phenotypic and clinical data across Europe through establishing a federated, sustainable and secure infrastructure to access the data.
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