Weekly Brief, 25 March 2024

This week's highlights

There will be no Weekly Brief next Monday 1 April (Easter Monday)

Reminder: BioHackathon call for project proposals closing soon

Deadline: 8 April 2024

Do you have a bioinformatics project idea that needs a little stimulus? Submit your project proposals to get the chance to meet with experts to drive the project forward.

Submit your project proposal

New ELIXIR Commissioned Service Guidelines published

Please be informed that the new Guidelines for ELIXIR Commissioned Services (CoS) have been published on the ELIXIR website.

The Guidelines are designed to assist prospective Commissioned Service (CoS) co-leads and contributing partners through every step of the ELIXIR CoS project, from application to successful completion. The document is structured into three parts:

• Part 1 focuses on the pre-award phase, offering essential information and administrative support.
• Part 2 details the conditions and implementation process following a successful project application.
• Part 3 outlines the operational support provided by the Hub to assist Nodes members in their Commissioned Services activities.

For any questions regarding the Guidelines, please contact Kelly Tunstall

Recommended reads

The Minimal Dataset for Cancer of the 1+Million Genomes Initiative

A B1MG preprint

For a real impact on healthcare, precision cancer medicine requires accessibility and interoperability of clinical and genomic data across centres and countries. The European Union 1+MG initiative, supported by the Horizon 2020 B1MG project, aims to outline data models, guidance, best practices, and technical infrastructures for transnational access to sequenced genomes, including cancer genomes. The authors proposed the 1+MG-Minimal Dataset for Cancer (1+MG-MDC) as a model to create homogeneous databases, which would, in turn, guide discussions on clinical and genomic features with prognostic or therapeutic value and foster real-world data research.

Read more

EasyDock: customizable and scalable docking tool

An ELIXIR-CZ paper

Docking of large compound collections becomes an important procedure to discover new chemical entities. Screening of large sets of compounds may also occur in de novo design projects guided by molecular docking. To facilitate these processes, there is a need for automated tools capable of efficiently docking a large number of molecules using multiple computational nodes within a reasonable timeframe. The authors proposed and implemented a simple model that predicts the runtime of docking experiments and applied it to minimise overall docking time. The current version of EasyDock supports popular docking programs, namely Autodock Vina, gnina, and smina.

Read more

Updates from Nodes

Three SIB Group Leaders join ISCBs 2024 Class of Fellows

Niko Beerenwinkel (Computational Biology group), Torsten Schwede (Computational Structural Biology group) and Mihaela Zavolan (RNA Regulatory Networks group) are elected as 2024 Fellows by the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). Congratulations on all three for this great recognition of their contribution to the field!

Read the news

Updates from Platforms

Compute Platform bi-monthly call

5 April 2024 | 14:00-15:00 CET

The Compute Platform welcomes all ELIXIR members to join its next open bi-monthly call on the GAIA-X initiative by ExCo member Harald Wenger (ELIXIR-DE).

Agenda with Zoom link

Updates from Communities

3D-Bioinfo Community is looking for leads of different themes

Deadline: 30 April 2024

The 3D-BioInfo Community is seeking applications from people to become:

• Coordinator for the 3D-BioInfo theme on protein engineering and design
• Deputy Coordinators of all five 3D-BioInfo themes a) protein annotations b) protein complexes c) protein ligand interactions d) protein nucleic acid interactions e) protein engineering and design
• Deputy General Coordinator: takes on more responsibility for the organisation of the themes and the Community.

In addition, people wishing to be on the Steering Committee for the organisation of the annual general meeting in 2024 are also invited to apply.

Anyone interested should send a CV together with a statement (no more than 500 words) to Christine Orengo explaining their relevant experience and why they are interested in the role.

Register for the IDP Community meeting Community meeting

13 May 2024 | Hybrid - Thessaloniki, Greece
Registration deadline: 15 April (in person) | 12 May (online)

The ELIXIR IDP Community will hold its F2F meeting back to back with the ML4NG 2nd Main Conference in Thessaloniki in May. The IDP Community aims to develop standards, tools and resources to accelerate the identification, analysis and functional characterisation of IDPs, i.e. proteins containing regions that lack a stable secondary or tertiary structure and that are thought to be involved in many human diseases, including cancer, Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease.

Register now

Updates from Focus Groups

FAIR training handbook

Based on the paper describing the 10 simple rules for FAIR training materials publication, the FAIR training Focus Group created the FAIR training handbook to provide guidance on how you can FAIRify your training material.

Read more

Updates from other initiatives

EGI2024 Call for abstracts is open

Deadline: 25 April 2024

EGI2024 will take place in Lecce, Italy from 30 September to 4 October. Call fro abstracts for short and long talks, posters and demonstrations in a range of topics is now open.

More information

Open Call for EOSC Association Task Force members

Deadline: 21 April 2024

EOSC Association is inviting qualified experts to apply to become a member of the reconfigured and rescoped EOSC-A Task Forces:

• FAIR Metrics and Digital Objects Task Force
• EOSC Technical and Semantic Interoperability Task Force
• Long-term Data Retention Task Force
• Health Data Task Force

The application form and all information on how to apply to become a Task Force member, including the eligibility criteria and the selection principles, is available on the website.

Apply now

NeIC 2024 - Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration Conference

27 - 29 May 2024 | Tallinn, Estonia

The Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration facilitates the development and operation of high-quality e-Infrastructure solutions in areas of joint Nordic interest. Call for papers and conference registration is now open.

More information

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 Events and Conferences

ELIXIR All Hands 2024
10-12 June 2024 | Uppsala, Sweden

ECCB 2024
16-20 September 2024 | Turku, Finland

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

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
 

Cloud Engineer (CyVerse UK)

Earlham Institute

Bioinformatician, proteomics

Stockholm University

Staff Scientist: Bioinformatician in Epidemiology and Biology of Infections

Ume university

Research Data Engineers (RE1-RE2)

Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)