Weekly Brief, 18 November 2024

This week's highlights

7 ELIXIR-related projects funded by OSCARS open call


Seven projects with links to ELIXIR feature in the 58 projects funded by the first OSCARS open call. OSCARS is an EU-funded project which aims to bring together leading research infrastructures to strengthen open science in Europe. It runs two open calls with a total budget of 16 million.

Read the news

ICRI 2024 side event: Euro-Australian research infrastructure collaboration in the molecular life sciences

6 December 2024 | 9:00 - 13:00 AEST | Hybrid - Brisbane, Australia

ELIXIR and Australian BioCommons are holding a side event at ICRI 2024. The meeting will give an insight into the partnership between the infrastructures and how international collaboration can facilitate successful research infrastructure outcomes.

More information

Recommended reads

Linking the ECRIN Metadata Repository with the BBMRI-ERIC Directory to connect clinical studies with related biobanks and collections

An EOSC-Future paper


The BBMRI-ERIC Directory and the ECRIN Metadata Repository (MDR), already include much of the information required to link clinical studies and related sample collections. This study presents the work performed to find and implement those links across existing corresponding records in the two systems. The linking process between MDR studies and related collections in the BBMRI-ERIC Directory started with exploring linkage in both directions searching the BBMRI-ERIC Directory for candidate hits to try to link with MDR records, and searching the ECRIN MDR for candidate hits to try to link with Directory collections. Thereafter, a systematic search through the BBMRI-ERIC Directory was performed.

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Outcomes of an online hackathon for improving the annotation of Galaxy resources for microbial data resources

A Galaxy pre-print


Galaxy hosts a vast array of tools, tutorials, and workflows, with the exact number of workflows remaining uncertain. An effort of the microGalaxy community was started to update 50+ microbial-related Galaxy tools, link them to their respective bio.tools entries, and collectively peer-review the results. Annotating all mentioned resources would improve their findability but also allow for aggregation and display of resources covering similar topics. To facilitate this work and work on a proof-of-concept for other communities, the microGalaxy community organised an online hackathon in April 2024. During this hackathon, some microbial-related Galaxy tools have been improved and new features and improvements have been added to Galaxy Tool Metadata Extractor.

Read more

Updates from Nodes

SIB Training Courses in 2025

The programme of SIB courses for 2025 is now online. Training topics include data analysis, AI and machine learning, statistics, programming, and more. Please mark your calendars for any course you are interested in and sign up for the SIB mailing list to be notified when applications open.

Discover the SIB Training programme

Updates from Platforms

ELIXIR-GOBLET Train-the-Trainer course

14 - 17 January 2025 | 14:00 - 17:30 CET | Online


This course introduces trainers in the life sciences to learning principles, training techniques and material design as well as assessment and feedback. It offers guidance, ideas and tips for design development and delivery of training activities. It is part of the ELIXIR-GOBLET Train-the-Trainer programme.

More information and registration

Updates from Communities

ELIXIR Single Cell Omics Community: Call for new co-lead

Deadline: 05 December 2024

The ELIXIR Single Cell Omics Community is looking for one new co-lead to join the Community leadership team (Eija Korpelainen and Raffaele Calogero). Candidates should submit a short statement of their background and what they believe they will bring to the role.

A big thank you to Naveed Ishaque for his work as a co-lead and we look forward to his ongoing contribution to the Community.

For any questions or nominations, please contact Katharina Heil.

More information (including timeline and self-nomination details)

ELIXIR Biodiversity Community: Call for new co-lead

Deadline: 31 January 2025

The ELIXIR Biodiversity Community is looking for one new co-lead to join the Community leadership team (Rob Waterhouse and Toni Gabaldn). Candidates should submit a short statement of their background and what they believe they will bring to the role.

A big thank you to Josephine Burgin for her work as a co-lead in the past and we wish her all the best. Thank you also to Joana Pauperio for stepping in as an interim co-lead.

For any questions or nominations, please contact Physilia Chua.

More information (including timeline and self-nomination details)

ELIXIR Food & Nutrition Community: Call for new co-lead

Deadline: 31 January 2025

The ELIXIR Food and Nutrition Community is looking for one new co-lead to join the Community leadership team (Jildau Bouwmann and Frdrique Lisacek). Candidates should submit a short statement of their background and what they believe they will bring to the role.

A big thank you to Jan Stanstrup for his work as a co-lead and we look forward to his ongoing contribution to the Community.

For any questions or nominations, please contact Physilia Chua.

More information (including timeline and self-nomination details)

Updates from Focus Groups

Webinar: Environmental data on Galaxy Workflows

19 November 2024 | 14:00 - 15:00 CET | Online


This webinar will describe an approach to:

  • Enable environmentally-aware and sustainable data analysis in Galaxy.
  • Implement the "carbon footprint calculator for large bioinformatic workflows
  • Estimate the CO2 emissions and energy usage of a given job

More information and registration

Updates from other initiatives

Genome of Europe project launched: the first step towards a European reference genome

The Genome of Europe (GoE) is an ambitious pan-European project implemented jointly by 51 institutes across 27 European countries. The project brings together the ambitions of the 1+MG initiative, the legal and technical framework developed by the Genomic Data Infrastructure and genomic data providers to deliver a resourceful database for research and future clinical applications.

Read the news

Global Biodata Coalition open letter campaign


Life science data resources are important for broad and diverse stakeholders, including researchers, funders, scientists and policymakers. Through this open letter, members of these stakeholder groups highlight the importance of data resources and note their fragility and uncertain future.

Support the campaign

RI-Hubs webinar: Facility management

3 December 2024 | 16:00 - 17:00 CET | Online


The webinar will focus on challenges in facility management in Europe and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, including research infrastructure, interregional collaboration, sustainable practices and funding models.

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

ELIXIR Spain: Research Data Management for advanced users
27 - 28 November 2024 | Barcelona, Spain

de.NBI training course: DNA methylation: Design to discovery
5 & 6 December 2024 | Saarbrcken, Germany

de.NBI training course: Differential analysis of quantitative proteomics data using R
12 - 13 December 2024 | Online


EMBL-EBI course: Applications for gene-environment interactions in human health and disease
17 - 21 March 2025 | EMBL-EBI, UK

ELIXIR Events and Conferences

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

ELIXIR Tools Platform F2F meeting (hybrid) 2024
26 - 27 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

Lead for Data Research and Services

UK CEH

Automated Knowledge Graphs for Kidney Physiology and Pathology

Maastricht University

Framework for automated ODE model construction

Maastricht University

Protein Function Content Team Leader

EMBL-EBI

Computational Biology Data Scientist

University of Liverpool