Weekly Brief, 12 August 2024

This week's highlights

ELIXIR at ECCB 2024

16 -20 September 2024 | Turku, Finland

ELIXIR will be an ECCB sponsor this year and hold two workshops and an ELIXIR Communities track programme. The track programme talks will introduce three scientific areas outlined in the 20242028 ELIXIR Scientific Programme and showcase Community activities, as well as the benefits of being a member and using ELIXIR resources.

More information

Recommended reads

CAFA-evaluator: a Python tool for benchmarking ontological classification methods

An ELIXIR-supported paper


This paper presents CAFA-evaluator, a Python program designed to evaluate the performance of prediction methods on targets with hierarchical concept dependencies. It generalises multi-label evaluation to modern ontologies where the prediction targets are drawn from a directed acyclic graph and achieves high efficiency by leveraging matrix computation and topological sorting.

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Building better genome annotations across the tree of life

A BioHackathon paper


To determine which methods perform the best and determine whether the inclusion of RNA-seq data is necessary to obtain a high-quality annotation, the authors generated annotations with 10 different methods for 21 different species spanning vertebrates, plants, and insects. The study shows that the inclusion of RNA-seq data will lead to substantial improvements in genome annotations.

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Updates from Nodes

Europe PMC API workshop for ELIXIR - Part 2

5 September 2024 | 14:00 - 15:00 CEST

The workshop is tailored specifically for ELIXIR colleagues who wish to integrate and reuse developer tools from Europe PMC. Part 2 of the workshop series will offer support to those who wish to integrate and reuse Europe PMC tools. Recording of workshop part one is available online.


More information and registration

Updates from Communities

RDM training annotation: strategies for improved curation in TeSS

25 September 2024 | 11:00 - 12:30 CEST


The RDM Training Network, a subgroup of the ELIXIR RDM Community, invites the research community to join this engaging webinar to contribute ideas to enhance RDM training curation best practices and share user experience challenges and suggestions.

More information and registration

Updates from other initiatives

GA4GH Connect working sessions at the 12th plenary

16 - 17 September 2024 | Melbourne, Australia

The GA4GH Connect working sessions provide an opportunity for contributors to advance the GA4GH Road Map and gather feedback on product development and needs.


More information

INFRAFRONTIER ERIC is seeking a Scientific Director


INFRAFRONTIER, the European Research Infrastructure for Modelling Human Diseases, is seeking a Scientific Director that will act as the legal representative and the executive managing director of Infrafrontier ERIC together with an Administrative Director.

More information

1st OSCARS Open Call concluded with 58 projects selected


The first OSCARS Open Call for Open Science Projects and Services concluded in July resulting in a total of 58 projects being selected for funding. The projects together cover the widest possible range of types of activities and diversity of subjects.

Read the news

Upcoming ELIXIR events & webinars

ELIXIR Training Courses & Webinars

The ELIXIR TeSS portal has a variety of interesting events and courses organised by the ELIXIR Nodes. For more, visit TeSS portal

VIB course: Introduction to Git & GitHub
5 - 6 September 2024 | Leuven, Belgium

ELIXIR Events and Conferences


ECCB 2024
16 - 20 September 2024 | Turku, Finland


ELIXIR Single-Cell Omics Community meeting
16 - 17 September 2024 | Helsinki, Finland


ELIXIR Data Platform F2F 2024
1 - 2 October 2024 | Padova, Italy

ELIXIR STEERS WP2 & WP3 workshop
2 - 3 October 2024 | Padova, Italy


BioHackathon Europe 2024
4 - 8 November 2024 | Barcelona, Spain

ELIXIR Federated Human Data Community day
19 November 2024 | Lisbon, Portugal

ELIXIR Interoperability Platform F2F meeting (hybrid) 2024
25 - 26 November 2024 | Hybrid - Manchester, UK

Job vacancies

All vacancies are also published on the ELIXIR website (also including those from industry). If you need our help communicating your new open positions, you can submit a job advertisement and it will automatically appear on our newsletters. Go to our vacancy page to submit a job

Research Fellow / Senior Research Fellow
University College London

Senior Research Software Engineer

University of Nottingham

ELIXIR AT node coordinator (senior scientist)

University of Vienna and Medical University of Vienna

Senior Research Community Manager

Imperial College London

Postdoctoral Research Scientist - Gut Cell Atlas

Earlham Institute

Postdoctoral Research Scientist - Engineering plant-beneficial rhizobacteria

Earlham Institute