Weekly Brief, 21 October 2024

This week's highlights

ELIXIR Industry Advisory Committee meeting summary report

The ELIXIR Industry Advisory Committee (IAC) held its autumn meeting via Teleconference on 26 September 2024. The Summary Report with recommendations from the meeting has been published on the page of the ELIXIR IAC on the ELIXIR website.

Read the report

Recommended reads

Towards FAIRification of learning resources and catalogueslessons learnt from research communities

A paper on FAIR training


Eight disciplinary community case studies are presented and analysed in this paper to examine the motivations, challenges and opportunities towards FAIRification of learning resources, reflecting on how community structure leads to differing responsibilities. The case studies are based on reflections formulated in 2022, the aim is to pull together the experiences of these different communities, focusing on the processes and challenges they encountered, in order to structure this knowledge across different learning platforms, draw attention to the question of sustainability for learning resources and anticipate improvements in future policies and governance.

Read more

Accessible ecosystem for clinical research (Federated Learning for Everyone) : Development and usability study

An ELIXIR Belgium paper


This paper introduces Federated Learning for Everyone, an accessible framework facilitating multistakeholder collaboration in clinical research. It focuses on simplifying federated learning through an innovative ecosystem-based approach. By using an ecosystem-based collaborative learning strategy, FL4E represents a step forward in collaborative clinical research by merging the benefits of centralised and federated learning. Its modular ecosystem-based design and the degree of federation feature make it an inclusive, customizable framework suitable for a wide array of clinical research scenarios, promising to revolutionize the field through improved collaboration and data use.

Read more

Updates from Nodes

Empowering life sciences research: ELIXIR Estonia poster


This poster offers an overview of the work done by the ELIXIR Estonian Node. It outlines the focus of their work and provides insights into the training conducted by the Node, the various tools and services developed and collaborations with other countries.

Check the poster

Agreement signed between the Italian Nodes of the Research Infrastructures BBMRI and ELIXIR to promote synergies for Biomedical Research in Italy

A strategic collaboration agreement has been signed between BBMRI.it, the Italian Node of the Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure, and ELIXIR Italy. The Parties commit to advance the integrated analysis of biological "big data", collected and characterised in biobanks, and to promote the sharing of specialised knowledge and expertise in leveraging bioinformatics and biobank resources as an indispensable tool for innovation in the field of precision medicine.

BBMRI Italy - ELIXIR Italy agreement (in Italian)

Updates on Wikipathways an ELIXIR Netherlands service

The ELIXIR Netherlands WikiPathways service has been collaborating with EuropePMC with data links the External Links Service project. In August, the team updated the links and they are now updated on the EuropePMC website.

More details on the European website

Updates from Platforms

Contribute to the ELIXIR e-learning working group paper

The ELIXIR e-learning working group is finalising a paper on ELIXIR e-learning efforts and invites contributions to broaden the scope of the paper. The group is particularly interested in showcasing e-learning efforts from different ELIXIR Communities and countries, alongside the Galaxy Community and Node efforts already included from Belgium, EMBL-EBI, Switzerland, Germany, the UK, Slovenia, and France. This is an opportunity to share initiatives with a wider audience and collect resources within the ELIXIR network.

To contribute please contact Daniel Wibberg (ELIXIR Germany)

Updates from Focus Groups

RDA Focus Group summary report for life science stakeholders

The ELIXIR RDA Focus Group are pleased to share their summary report for life science stakeholders on the most recent RDA Plenary 22 event in May 2024. Annual RDA Plenary events take place and the highlights and outputs of their most recent event are signposted and summarised for ELIXIR members, GDI project stakeholders and ELIXIR RDM Community members.

The full report is available on Zenodo

Updates from other initiatives

BBMRI-ERIC launches 10-Year Roadmap: Biobanking for a healthier world


BMRI-ERIC launches its visionary 10-Year Roadmap that adopts the One Health approach to prioritise the interconnection between human, animal, and environmental health. It provides a blueprint for the research infrastructure, the biobanking community and wider partners that places biobanking at the heart of scientific research to achieve a healthier world.

Read more

Core Technologies for Life Sciences Congress 2025

10 - 12 June 2025 | Brno, Czech Republic
Abstract submission deadline: March 2025


This event is an excellent opportunity for core facility administrators, managers, researchers, and professionals to talk, collaborate, and dive into why core facilities are key to shaping the scientific world.

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 Estonia: Version control with Git
6 November 2024 | Tartu, Estonia

de.NBI training course: How to efficiently access the data of BacDive, BRENDA, LPSN, SILVA and more
11 November 2024 | 14:00 - 16:00 CET | Online

SIB course: Data analysis and representation in Python
11 November 2024 | Online

de.NBI training course: Introduction to kinetic modelling and simulation using COPASI
19 & 20 November 2024 | Online

SIB course: NGS - Quality control, alignment, visualisation
20 - 22 November 2024 | Bern, Switzerland

SIB course: Enrichment analysis
29 November 2024 | Online

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

SIB course: Cancer variant analysis
13 December 2024 | Online

ELIXIR Events and Conferences

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

PhD Evolutionary Engineering of Synthetic Microbial Communities

Wageningen University

Senior Project Manager (European Commission Projects)

ELIXIR

ELIXIR Project Management Office Manager

ELIXIR

Postdoctoral Fellow - EAZPOD 2024

EMBL-EBI

Senior Researcher at Medical Bioinformatics Centre

Turku Bioscience, University of Turku