ELIXIR has published its Annual Report for 2019, showcasing the major achievements in the last year and highlighting the effort of over 700 experts from 22 ELIXIR Nodes. The report presents ELIXIR services from across ELIXIR Nodes and reports on the progress made towards the Strategic Objectives of the Scientific Programme for 2019-2023.
ELIXIR-EXCELERATE: a Success story
After four years, the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE project successfully concluded in August 2019. The project laid the groundwork for the sustainable operation of ELIXIR for the benefit of a global community. The final review of the project took place in June 2019 in Lisbon, Portugal, and highlighted the coordination effort of the project: ELIXIR-EXCELERATE transformed ad hoc collaboration between individual organisations in ELIXIR Nodes into systematic and sustained links between national bioinformatics infrastructures.
Supporting scientific collaboration
One of the highlights in 2019 was a number of initiatives to support collaboration and knowledge exchange. In May ELIXIR launched a new series of networking events, the ELIXIR Bioinformatics Industry Forum, to discuss some of the major challenges in data-driven life science research. In November, ELIXIR organised the second edition of the ELIXIR Biohackathon, which attracted over 100 researchers and developers.
Looking ahead
In 2020 and beyond, ELIXIR will continue its focus on facilitating scientific and technical collaboration between national infrastructures in ELIXIR Nodes, and on a global scale through the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health or the Global Biodata Coalition.
The current COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for an integrated system of public data resources, corresponding standards and computing services. One of the priorities for 2020 is to coordinate these resources and ensure the shareability and accessibility of COVID-19 research data.