2019 Pathfinding Project

NOTE: This project completed in 2019. All subsequent work undertaken by Australian BioCommons has stemmed from this initial 1 year ‘pathfinding’ project.

Following an extensive national consultation exercise in 2017-2018, funding was committed from Bioplatforms Australia, the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and Australia’s Academic and Research Network (AARNet), for an initial “Pathfinder Project”, that was conducted in 2019-2020.

The high level aims of the BioCommons Pathfinder Project were to continue to actively engage the Australian bioscience community to deliver:

• An operating infrastructure providing a core set of bioinformatics services

• A set of research activities and associated communities providing exemplars for others to follow

• A consortium of participants providing guidance and implementation support

• A strategic plan for the BioCommons

• A five year operational plan for the delivery of the BioCommons (through to 2023)

The following sub-projects were undertaken in the 2019 Pathfinding Project:

• Establishment of a ‘BioCloud’: cyberinfrastructure that is appropriate for data-driven biology research

• Developing systems for non-model organism de novo genome assembly and annotation

• Improvements to the Galaxy Australia ‘Bring Your Own Data’ Analysis Platform

• Delivering impact to Australian Researchers by participating in a Global Data Commons