On 16-20 September 2024, ELIXIR was in Turku, Finland for the 22nd European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB 2024), organised by the University of Turku and the IT Center for Science (CSC), both part of ELIXIR Finland. The theme of ECCB 2024 focussed on “Data and Algorithms for health and science”.
As a sponsor of the event, ELIXIR held a Community track programme, two workshops and a dedicated booth to share information about ELIXIR with bioinformaticians and computational biologists from around the world.
During the conference opening session, Tim Hubbard, ELIXIR Director, gave an introduction to ELIXIR and the scientific priority areas outlined in ELIXIR’s Scientific Programme 2024-28. The four ELIXIR track sessions focused on ELIXIR Community activities around ELIXIR’s scientific priority areas and were supplemented by six ELIXIR Community track posters.
In the ELIXIR track sessions, the scientific priority areas were covered in more detail, with examples of current activities. Additionally, key ELIXIR activities in research data management, training and environmental sustainability were presented.
Two ELIXIR workshops were held before ECCB 2024, one around FAIR principles and the other about the technical requirements of the European Genomic Data Infrastructure (GDI) project. Lively and fruitful discussions were held in both sections leaving the participants with greater knowledge of ongoing work and the presenters with useful feedback and suggestions.
The ELIXIR booth at the ECCB 2024 enabled conference participants to find out more about ELIXIR’s work and impact. Some bioinformaticians had heard about ELIXIR by using ELIXIR Core Data Resources for their research, and others via past editions of ECCB or ISMB/ECCB. Sponsoring and participating in ECCB gives ELIXIR an opportunity to share its work, hear feedback from the bioinformatics community and build collaborations for future research.
Tim Hubbard, Director of ELIXIR, at the ECCB 2024 opening session. (photo credit: Linda Svarfvar)
More information