Deep dive into international research infrastructure: insights from the ELIXIR All Hands Meeting in Greece

Dr Andrea Guzmán Mesa, ELIXIR International Relations Officer, meets with Conrad, Steven and Christina from BioCommons

Each year, BioCommons sends representatives to the ELIXIR All Hands Meeting, an event that brings together over 400 international peers. This attendance is a valuable outcome of the Collaboration Agreement between BioCommons and ELIXIR, which allows for the extension of knowledge-sharing opportunities.

ELIXIR is a life sciences infrastructure that shares many functional similarities and interests with BioCommons, but on a vast Europe-wide scale. It brings together a workforce from over 240 research institutes spread over 21 member countries. The opportunity to have deep discussions on research infrastructure topics and leverage the experience of this specialist workforce is shared around the BioCommons team each year.

This year Dr Christina Hall (Assoc Director - Training and Communications), Dr Steven Manos (Assoc Director - BioCloud) and Dr Conrad Leonard (Technical Lead, Human Genome Informatics) travelled to Thessaloniki, Greece, to participate. 

As the organiser of the Australian Outpost of the annual BioHackathon Europe, Christina was invited to lead a workshop on ‘Enriching the virtual biohackathon experience’, along with Eva Alloza from the Spanish National Bioinformatics Institute. The collaborative workshop sought to gather recommendations for practices to support virtual participation at hackathon-style events.

Invited speakers from the Health Data Research UK, Barcelona Supercomputing  Center (Spain), ELIXIR Germany, Center for Genomic Regulation (Spain), Chiba University (Japan), ELIXIR Hub, and Australian BioCommons, shared many examples of hacking events that welcome virtual participation. The outcomes will soon be shared as a ‘cheatsheet’ for project managers of the upcoming BioHackathon Europe to support better virtual experiences for participants including those joining from Australia.

Australian BioCommons was mentioned in many different contexts during various sessions of the three-day meeting. Christina presented BioCommons as an example of ELIXIR’s international impact and she also formed part of the training panel discussion ELIXIR training services: a roadmap towards 2028 and the EOSC context.

Steven’s key focus was the interaction between communities and platforms. He emphasised that "consulting with communities - groups with shared needs who converge around special interests - is invaluable because they sit in between research infrastructures and the rest of the world." An interesting observation shared at the meeting was that communities, while keenly aware of their domain's needs and standards, often don’t know what’s happening in other platforms and believe their challenges require unique platforms. This frequently contrasts with the views of platform developers, who tend to deliver generic solutions lacking the flexibility and extensibility that communities need.

The meeting's collaborative and positive atmosphere always fosters forward-thinking approaches to take back to our own circumstances. For instance, there were discussions about how the common tendency to break down problems and solve individual steps could be enhanced by a concerted effort to consolidate solutions into a cohesive package as a final step. Additionally, adopting common vocabulary, easier-to-understand language, and good documentation were acknowledged as crucial. Engaging more researcher champions to liaise with communities was also recognised as very important.

For Conrad, a dominant theme was data interoperability and federation, with multiple sessions highlighting streamlined data flow, service accessibility, and the importance of collaboration. Excellent examples of FAIR principles in practice were showcased across data, software, and training. Another significant focus was on the challenges associated with managing sensitive data. Updates on secure research data environments, legal frameworks, and trustworthy access and analysis were particularly informative. The evolving role of AI was a strong and broadly discussed theme.

Staying current in a broad range of research infrastructure topics is challenging, and directly supported by opportunities like participating in this annual ELIXIR meeting. It provided a valuable opportunity to connect with European peers, gain insights into a wide range of current activities, share our experiences, and engage in deep discussions on topics of mutual interest.

Read more about the meeting in ELIXIR’s news story.