Weekly Brief, 11 September 2023

This week's highlights

ELIXIR team visits Australia

Over the summer, a team of 14 ELIXIR experts visited Australia for a month to coincide with the Galaxy Community Conference (GCC2023), hosted by the Australian BioCommons. The presence of ELIXIR experts brought a European perspective to the global meeting.

Read the news

Expression of Interest for Science Priority Area co-Leads (Re-opened)

Deadline: 16 October 2023

The Expression of Interest (EOI) form has been re-opened. The current slate of candidates covers the areas of Expertise/Experience/Skills, but is lacking in diversity, in particular of gender. Current applicants are still under consideration and need not re-apply. We ask all Nodes to contact potential candidates and encourage them to apply.

We seek experts familiar with ELIXIR and the Science Priority Areas to co-lead activities in the 2024-2028 Scientific Programme. The co-leads will work with Hub staff to help shape the strategy for allocating core funding, participating in consortia, and selecting and developing new ELIXIR Communities. We invite expressions of interest for 3 co-leads of each of the two new Priority Areas:

Should you have any questions, please contact katharina.heil [at] elixir-europe.org (Katharina Heil)

Recommended reads

Artificial intelligence to assist specialists in the detection of haematological diseases

ELIXIR-EXCELERATE supported research


In this paper, the authors present an AI model based on neural networks to support practitioners in the identification of different haematological diseases using only rutinary and inexpensive blood count tests. The authors present both binary and multiclass classification of haematological diseases using a specialised neural network architecture where data is studied and combined along it obtaining results up to 96% accuracy for the binary classification experiment. The use of these machine learning techniques could reduce the cost and decision time and improve the quality of life for both specialists and patients while producing more precise diagnoses.

Read more

Extending inherited metabolic disorder diagnostics with biomarker interaction visualizations

An EJP RD paper


Inherited Metabolic Disorders are rare diseases where one impaired protein leads to a cascade of changes in the adjacent chemical conversions. Visualization of the connections between metabolic biomarkers and the enzymes involved might aid in the diagnostic process. The goal of this study was to provide a proof-of-concept framework for integrating knowledge of metabolic interactions with real-life patient data before scaling up this approach. This framework was tested on two groups of well-studied and related metabolic pathways. The lessons learned will help to scale up the framework and support the diagnosis of other less-understood IMDs.

Read more

Updates from Nodes

Combining data from different sources for personalised treatment


The Bioinformatics Center at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF), led by Virpi Ahola, is developing new applications for analysing biomedical and multimodal data. These can be used to study cancers, metabolics, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.

Read the article

ELIXIR-UK All Hands

7-8 November 2023 | Norwich, UK


This two-day meeting is open to anyone from a member organisation or looking to get involved in ELIXIR-UK. Join the annual ELIXIR-UK All Hands to:

  • Discover new opportunities and share experiences on how to get involved in ELIXIR activities
  • Network with key players working on life science data infrastructure across the UK
  • Participate in the development of ELIXIR-UK strategy, delivery and community.

More information and registration

Updates from Plaforms

Grand challenges in bioinformatics education and training


The life and health science communities are facing a critical challenge in managing a discovery process that is becoming ever more quantitative and data driven. Members of the ELIXIR Training Platform, GOBLET, ISCB, APBioNET, Bioclues, SolBio, and the H3ABioNet got together to identify a consensus set of grand challenges in bioinformatics education and training.

Read the paper

Updates from Communities

Register for the Metabolomics Community and Industry F2F/hybrid Meeting

16-18 October 2023 | Hybrid - Heidelberg, Germany
Registration deadline: 28 September (f2f) | 15 October (online)


The meeting combines the Metabolomics Community F2F as well as a metabolomics industry meeting. The first part will focus on Community activities and possibly an updated white paper/roadmap. The second part will focus on metabolomics industry relations, and includes industry representatives from across the world.

Find out more and register now

Register for the Single Cell Omics Community F2F/hybrid & IS Meeting

18 - 20 October 2023 | Hybrid - Hinxton, UK
Registration deadline: 27 September (f2f) | 16 October (online)


The Single Cell Omics Community will hold its F2F/hybrid Meeting in October. The aim is to establish best practices in managing research data and pinpoint key areas where the community requires improvements to enhance data FAIRness. The workshop is scheduled for a duration of two days, from morning to lunchtime.

Find out more and register now

Updates from other initiatives

BY-COVID Research Data Management Training - Preparing to manage your data across disciplines

17 October, 22 November, 12 December 2023 | 14:00 - 15:00 CET | Online


BY-COVID aims to make COVID-19 and other infectious diseases data open and accessible to scientists and anyone who can use it, such as medical staff in hospitals or government officials. In these RDM Training webinars, participants will learn from BY-COVID experts about their RDM practices, tools, use cases and challenges when managing data.

Register your interest here

PathOS case study on co-creation community


In its first year, PathOS has launched a co-creation community and has successfully conducted three expert focus groups. Through its selected case studies, PathOS aspires to bring forth the intricate dynamics between Open Science and its multi-dimensional impact on academia, industry, and policy-making.

Read the blog post

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

SIB course: Introduction to Containers and Snakemake for Reproducible Research
12 - 13 October 2023 | Davos, Switzerland

ELIXIR Events and Conferences

Toxicology Community meeting
20 September 2023 | Hybrid - Brussels, Belgium

Galaxy Community meeting
4-6 October 2023 | Hybrid - Freiburg, Germany

BioHackathon Europe 2023
30 October - 3 November 2023 | Barcelona, Spain

3D BioInfo Community meeting
15-17 November 2023 | Hybrid - Prague, Czech Republic

Federated human data (FHD) Community meeting
16-17 November 2023 | Hybrid - 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
 

Elixir Project Administrator

ELIXIR

Legal & Ethics Officer

ELIXIR

Bioinformatician for Metabolic Pathway Reconstruction

Leibniz Institute DSMZ

Data Steward

Luxembourg National Data Service

Senior Data Steward

Luxembourg National Data Service