Key Contributors Update 29 Jul 2016

The update to ELIXIR Heads of Nodes is sent weekly on Friday afternoon. Training and Technical Coordinators are also copied in. Contact nicola.kay@elixir-europe.org for any questions.

Important updates

Ireland joins ELIXIR

Ireland has become the latest Member to join ELIXIR, following its ratification of the ECA yesterday. A news release can be found on the ELIXIR website.

ELIXIR Handbook

As part of WP12, the ELIXIR Hub has developed the first draft of the ELIXIR Handbook. The first version of the Handbook will be submitted to the EC in the end of August.

The Handbook is a living document, meant to serve as a reference for ELIXIR operations and as the infrastructure expands, we envision the Handbook to evolve with it. At the moment, the document is a google doc, but together with the developments to the ELIXIR website and intranet, the Handbook will in the future be deeply integrated within the website with most content available to the public while some remaining as internal to the ELIXIR community.

We welcome your feedback to the Handbook, please send this to nicola.kay@elixir-europe.org by 14 August to be in time for the first version.

Action items

Send any feedback regarding the first draft of the operational ELIXIR Handbook to nicola.kay@elixir-europe.org by 14 August 2016.

From last week's update:

Register for the ELIXIR HoNs meeting at the ECCB, and let us know if you have any additional items for inclusion on the agenda by Monday 15 August.

Send any requests for items for inclusion in the Second EXCELERATE Grant Agreement amendment to Stephanie Suhr in advance of the meeting.

For information

Approval of Implementation Study Contracts

The contracts for the following 2015 and 2016 Implementation Studies have been sent to the ELIXIR Board for approval by written procedure:

1. Technical and community development in preparation for scaling-up of the ELIXIR Tools & Data Services Registry, initiated 1 January 2015 and conducted by ELIXIR Denmark;

2. Rare disease interoperability backbone, initiated 1 May 2015 and conducted by ELIXIR Netherlands, EMBL-EBI, and ELIXIR-France;

3. Genomic data management for TraIT using the EGA, initiated 12 June 2015 and conducted by ELIXIR-Netherlands, EMBL-EBI and ELIXIR-Spain;

4. Solutions for IMI data management - scoping study with IMI Oncotrack, initiated 1 January 2016 and conducted by EMBL-EBI with ELIXIR-ES as an unfunded partner;

5. Implementation Study on Data Identification and Interoperability, to be initiated in September 2016 and conducted by EMBL-EBI;

6. Data Resource Implementations for the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health Data Schema, to be initiated in September 2016 and conducted by ELIXIR-Switzerland, ELIXIR-France and EMBL-EBI.

7. ELIXIR Implementation Study on funding models for knowledge bases - Towards a sustainable funding model for the UniprotKB/Swiss-Prot use case; to be initiated in September 2016 and conducted by ELIXIR-Switzerland.

We will notify the respective Nodes once the Contracts have been approved. For Nodes where the Collaboration Agreement has not been signed yet, the contracts for the above Implementation Studies will be sent to the Board for approval at a later stage.

We have also initiated preparations for two new Implementation Studies in the rare disease area.

Representatives announced for ELIXIR Luxembourg

The following representatives have been announced for ELIXIR Luxembourg:

Key dates and meetings

Heads of Node meeting

  • 4 September, 16-19:00, The Hague, Netherlands (during the ECCB 2016)

Heads of Node Teleconference

  • 8 December 2016, 9-12.00 UK time

ELIXIR-EXCELERATE midterm review

  • 10 May 2017, Brussels, Belgium. Time and agenda TBC.

ELIXIR Policy event:

  • 11 May 2017, Brussels, Belgium, Time and agenda TBC