This week's highlights
ELIXIR announces five new SAB members
We are happy to announce that following the ELIXIR Board's decision at its meeting in October 2023, the ELIXIR SAB's membership was expanded from 12 to 15 members and, including several replacements of current members, we have welcomed five new members to our SAB since then, namely:
- Prof. Fiona Brinkman (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
- Dr Danielle Kemmer (Novo Nordisk Foundation, Denmark)
- Dr Paul Kersey (Kew Gardens, UK)
- Prof. Bartha Maria Knoppers (McGill University, Canada)
- Dr Eric Meslin (Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), Canada)
We look forward to seeing them at the SAB f2f meeting, taking place on 14-15 February in Hinxton, UK.
ECCB 2024 - ELIXIR Communities and poster track submission opens
Deadline: 23 April 2024
ELIXIR Finland will be hosting ECCB 2024 in Turku, Finland on September 16-20, 2024. The programme with a focus on data and algorithms for health and science includes an ELIXIR Communities and poster track. Submissions are now welcome via the ECCB 2024 webpage. ELIXIR acts as a sponsor and will have additional opportunities for a small number of workshops during the event. Should you have any questions, please contact ELIXIR Chief Technical Officer Peter Maccallum
More information
Recommended reads
EOSC as an Enabler of Research Assessment Reform: Position Paper from Task Force on Research Careers, Recognition, and Credit
An EOSC paper
This position paper presents recommendations from the TF RCRC on reforming research assessment to support researchers engaging with EOSC. The recommendations are aimed at the EOSC Partnership and EOSC-A (including the members of EOSC-A) to strategically contribute to the reform of research assessment with respect to EOSC and Open Science.
Read more
LIPID MAPS: update to databases and tools for the lipidomics community
An ELIXIR-UK paper
LIPID Metabolites and Pathways Strategy provides a systematic and standardized approach to organizing lipid structural and biochemical data. This paper describes the expansion of existing databases in LIPID MAPS, including richer metadata with literature provenance, taxonomic data and improved interoperability to facilitate FAIR compliance. A joint project funded by ELIXIR-UK, in collaboration with WikiPathways, curates and hosts pathway data, and annotates lipids in the context of their biochemical pathways.
Read more
Updates from Nodes
Lunaphore and SIB secure Innosuisse funding for AI-based assay development tools
Supporting the life science sector with AI expertise, SIB is collaborating with Lunaphore, a Bio-Techne brand. This project has now been awarded Innosuisse funding to further accelerate the adoption of spatial biology in any research project such as in the clinic, where the technology can speed up the discovery of next-generation therapeutic interventions.
Read the news
The European Health Data Space: health data moves across borders for research purposes
Cross-border health data has not been appropriately utilised in research and decision-making in Europe. There is a strong desire in the EU to create infrastructure for the secondary use of health data and sensitive genomic data. The European Health Data Space (EHDS) and specifically its HealthData@EU environment is being established for this purpose.
Read more
Updates from Platforms
Compute Platform 2023 f2f meeting report
Compute Platforms annual f2f meeting took place on 7-8 February 2023 in Helsinki, Finland, co-hosted by ELIXIR Finland. The summary report of the meeting is now available online.
Read the report
Updates from Communities
Call for new Microbial Biotechnology Community co-lead
Deadline: 26 February 2024
The ELIXIR Microbial Biotechnology Community is looking for one new co-lead to join the Community leadership team. Candidates should submit a short statement of their background and what they believe they will bring to the role. For any questions or nominations, please contact Clare Garrard
Updates from Focus Groups
Summary report of the EOSC Symposium 2023
The EOSC Symposium 2023 took place on 20-22 September in Madrid, Spain coinciding with the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union. This summary report is designed to be of use primarily by ELIXIR stakeholders and secondarily by Life Sciences stakeholders, particularly those of the EOSC-Life Cluster and its related Research Infrastructures.
Updates from other initiatives
RDA for FAIR Data, Software and Hardware Community Cross-fertilisation workshop summary
The community cross-fertilisation workshop brought members of RDA Working Groups and Interest Groups together, with wider research data community to share and discuss challenges, solutions and initiatives associated with managing and reusing FAIR research outputs. The key findings of the workshop will be used to direct the future strategy of the RDA community. The workshop summary referenced the efforts of FAIR Software and Machine Learning standards of ELIXIR.
Read the report
Monthly Bioschemas community call
15 January 2024 | 16:00-18:00 CET
The meeting will feature a presentation by John Kunze (Ronin Institute) entitled "Use of ARKs as non-paywalled PIDs for data and vocabulary terms".
Meeting agenda and connection link
2024 Festival of Genomics and Biodata
24-25 January 2024 | London, UK
The Festival of Genomics and Biodata brings together inspirational speakers, the latest research and clinical breakthroughs, cutting-edge technology and incredible networking opportunities.
This year, Serena Scollen (ELIXIR Hub) will join the session on Access to Genomic Data Across Borders: The European Genomic Data Infrastructure and Carole Goble (ELIXIR-UK) will join the session on BioFAIR: A BioCommons Infrastructure for UK Life Science Researchers.
More information and registration
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
SIB course: First Steps with UNIX in Life Sciences
16 January 2024 | Online
SIB course: Introduction to Statistics with R
22 -24 January 2024 | Lausanne, Switzerland
SIB course: Introduction to Viral Bioinformatics
23 January 2024 | Online
SIB course: First Steps with R in Life Sciences
1-2 February 2024 | Lausanne, Switzerland
SIB course: Introduction to GPU Programming for Life Sciences
12 February 2024 | Online
Maximizing the Potential of Agricultural Research Data: A Guide to Crafting an Effective Data Management Plan
15 February 2024 | Online
ELIXIR Events and Conferences
ELIXIR Compute Platform 2024 Face-to-Face Meeting
24 January 2024 | Brno, Czech Republic
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
CarrerasLeaders postdoctoral fellowships in blood cancers
Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC)