Key Contributors update 18 May 2018

This update is sent weekly on Friday afternoon and goes to ELIXIR key stakeholders. It contains requests for actions regarding operations and developments within ELIXIR. Contact joana.wingender@elixir-europe.org for any questions.

An ELIXIR HoNs shared folder including meeting materials from HoN meetings, reference documents, slides & graphics archive can be found on google drive.

For action

New

We are happy to announce the upcoming launch of the ELIXIR Recommended Interoperability Resource (RIR) Selection. The submission period is from 1 June - 16 July 2018.

We invite you to join the ELIXIR Webinar on the RIR application process, scheduled for 11 June 2018.

Please find any further information via the ELIXIR Website. More detailed information will be provided in the upcoming Weekly Brief on 21 June.

For action

Ongoing

As approved by the Board, in this year's Work Plan we have allocated funds for Community-led Implementation Studies. To ensure a transparent process driven by scientific excellence we will use the ELIXIR Board approved process for internal tendering (ELIXIR/2015/27.1) to select a small portfolio of Implementation Studies.

We are developing the request for proposals and will bring it to the HoN for approval at the HoN meeting at the All-Hands meeting in June. We then expect to open the request for proposals in Q3/2018. The ELIXIR Communities and Services Coordinator, John Hancock, is coordinating this project.

In preparation for the call, please suggest potential reviewers for these Implementation Studies. Reviewers should be senior, active researchers who are not current participants in ELIXIR. They should have background and expertise in infrastructure services and in particular expertise relating to the existing seven ELIXIR Communities: Galaxy, Human Data, Marine Metagenomics, Metabolomics, Proteomics, Plant Science and Rare Diseases.

Please send suggestions to John Hancock (john.hancock@elixir-europe.org) by the end of May 2018.

For information

ELIXIR will host an extraordinary Board meeting on Monday, 2 July in Barcelona, Spain. The purpose of the meeting will be to allow ELIXIR members to discuss the ELIXIR 2019-23 Programme and Financial Plan. The Board will then vote on the documents at the ELIXIR Board meeting that is scheduled to take place from 12-13 November 2018 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. With the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into force on 25 May, the ELIXIR Hub GDPR Working Group have been reviewing and updating the ELIXIR Hub personal data and privacy policies. Most of those changes will concern handling personal data in events registrations, mailing lists and our internal documents. For details on the activities of the ELIXIR Hub GDPR Working Group's contact us at info@elixir-europe.org.

We will keep your subscription to the Key Contributors Update and will hold your email for as long as you are involved in ELIXIR. If you are no longer active in ELIXIR, you can unsubscribe from receiving the Key Contributors Update online. We invite you to join the ELIXIR Webinar on "Access to Sensitive Human Data with the ELIXIR AAI", which is scheduled to take place on 23 May at 14:00 CET.

In the webinar, Mikael Linden (ELIXIR AAI co-chair) and Juha Trnroos (EXCELERATE WP9) will present the ELIXIR AAI Permissions API and demonstrate how it is used to manage access to EGA dataset replica in the ELIXIR Finland cloud.

In case of interest, please register for the webinar via the ELIXIR Website.

The RItrain project is organising an interactive workshop for Research Infrastructures (RIs) to cooperate on equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The agenda will be shaped by the needs and priorities of the participating RIs, but the overall workshop aims are for participants to:

Increase knowledge and understanding of the full spectrum of equality, diversity and inclusion
Network and exchange experiences with other RIs on their status and challenges
Identify best practices
Create or revise an RI-specific action plan

The workshop is to take place from 29-30 October 2018 (TBC) at EMBL-EBI, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK. There is no registration fee, participants are expected to cover their travel and accommodation costs.

Register your interest via this Doodle poll or contact Claire Johnson (claire@ebi.ac.uk) for further information.

IMI Call 14 open


The Innovative Medicines Initiative has four topics currently open within Call 14. The Topic on the 'Development of a platform for federated and privacy-preserving machine learning in support of drug discovery' may be of interest to ELIXIR Nodes. Full details are available on the IMI website.
Deadline for submission: June 14

Key dates and meetings

Heads of Nodes meeting @ ELIXIR All Hands

  • 6-7 June 2018, Berlin, Germany

Extraordinary ELIXIR Board meeting

  • 2 July 2018, Barcelona, Spain

Heads of Nodes meeting @ ECCB 2018

  • 13 September 2018, Athens, Greece

SAB Teleconference

  • 21 June 2018

ELIXIR Board meeting

  • 12-13 November 2018 | Ljubljana, Slovenia

ELIXIR 5th Anniversary event

  • 11 December 2018, Brussels, Belgium

Heads of Nodes meeting

  • 12 December 2018, Brussels, Belgium