December edition

This is the LinkedIn version of the BioCommons newsletter

Join us in taking a look back as BioCommons celebrates a 5 year milestone. These highlights were achieved through deep collaboration between the BioCommons team, partners,?friends and end users - thank you to everyone involved!

This last year saw BioCommons celebrate many other achievements and outputs.

2023 highlights:

• National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy funding?was allocated to BioCommons (via Bioplatforms Australia ) for the next five years
• We extended our collaboration strategy with ELIXIR Europe?through to 2028
• Galaxy Australia hosted the 2023 Galaxy Community Conference in Brisbane
• We formalised our longstanding relationship with Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre to deliver?an unparalleled level of supercomputing access for life scientists
• A large group?of European research infrastructure specialists visited across July and August thanks to an ELIXIR travel grant
• The Australian Cardiovascular disease Data Commons was launched following a successful Medical Research Future Fund bid?
• Galaxy Australia celebrated the submission of six?million jobs, quickly followed by the seven millionth?job (and are rapidly approaching eight million!)
• We previewed the Australian Reference Genome Atlas, which we are developing with our partners Atlas of Living Australia and Bioplatforms Australia , with additional funding from Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) ?
• We supported the launch of the online open course 'Conservation Genomics for Threatened Species Management'
• We welcomed five new members to?the BioCommons team - Minh Vu , Julie Schumann , Patrick Capon , Irene Hung and Guerdon Mukama

Looking ahead, we?have many exciting developments in the pipeline as we continue on our mission to enhance Australia's life sciences research landscape through provision of national scale research infrastructure. We can't wait to share?the journey with you!

?Wrapping up the ‘Bring Your Own Data’ project and a look to the future

Read?how?BYOD enabled highly accessible, available, and scalable data analysis and sharing capabilities for the benefit of Australian life science researchers.

What bioinformatics training do Australians?need?

We'd love to know what bioinformatics training you need to advance your work!?Please?complete our Bioinformatics Training Needs survey to have your say - it should take under 10 minutes.

We collaborate with the National Bioinformatics Training Cooperative?to bring you the best and most relevant bioinformatics training opportunities. It's important for us to hear what training you need so that we can best support your research.

Launching the Australian BioCommons community blog

We are now welcoming contributions from BioCommons partners, life sciences community members and researchers?who have content to share. The blog is informal; posts can focus on sharing learnings, personal perspectives and small wins, and the content should benefit others who are working in the life sciences.

Browse the latest blogs on our website, or write your own!

Services support during the holiday period

All BioCommons services?will continue to operate over the Christmas Holiday period, but with reduced support from 22?Dec?2023 until?4?Jan?2024.

Please understand that there will be limited responses to help requests over this period as our staff take a well-earned holiday. We hope you'll take some rest from work too and return refreshed in the New Year.

Put the quieter summer weeks to good use

• Learn how genetic data plays a role in?Australian conservation management actions in the Threatened Species Initative's online open course
• Watch a preview of the Australian Reference Genome Atlas,?a new web portal to easily discover genomic data housed in multiple places around the world
• Upskill in conducting computational biological research on Galaxy Australia?by accessing free tutorials you can complete at your own pace?on?the Galaxy Training Network

Get involved!

• A publication describing the Galaxy platform and community is being drafted, and there's?a call out for contributors. If you think you’ve made a substantial contribution to the Galaxy community ecosystem in the 2 years since the last paper, consider joining the international team of authors before Jan 22, 2024.?More information.
• You're invited to join a new neuroscience community launched by Global Alliance for Genomics and Health and the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) .?It will lay the groundwork for connecting neuroscience and genomic data around the world. The group will develop the standards, collaborations, and systems needed to power neuroscience 'data visiting' across a global network.?Join today.

Upcoming bioinformatics training and events

View all events

FORUM: Connections in computational proteomics

30 Jan 2024, 12?- 5 pm AEDT and 31 Jan 2024, 8:30 - 11 am AEDT

MEETING: BioChats

6 Feb 2024, 12?pm AEDT

WEBINAR:?Multivariate integration of multi-omics data with mixOmics

21?Feb 2024, 1 - 2 pm AEDT

Speaker: Kim-Anh Lê Cao, University of Melbourne

WORKSHOP: Genetic outlier analysis

27 and 28 Feb 2024, 11 am - 4 pm AEDT

Speaker: Katarina Stuart , 新西兰奥克兰大学

WEBINAR:?MaveDB: discovery and interpretation of high-throughput functional assay data

26 Mar 2024, 1 - 2 pm AEDT

Speaker: Alan Rubin , WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)

This month's publications

Seven publications cited BioCommons services in December, including a preprint that describes the Total Perspective Vortex?- a scheduling tool that we recently featured in a news article.

BioCommons training on using QIIME2 for microbiome data analysis?and visualisation was acknowledged in a publication using metagenomics to diagnose pleural space infections (a small cavity surrounding each lung).

Browse all the publications enabled by BioCommons services

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Australian BioCommons is enabled by NCRIS through Bioplatforms Australia support.