ELIXIR

📣 BioHackathon Europe 2026 Call for project proposals is now open! Submit your #bioinformatitcs project for #BioHackEU26 to meet with other #bioinformaticians 🧑💻 to drive the project forward. 🎯 We welcomed project proposals that focus on areas that support the work of ELIXIR Platforms, Communities and Focus Groups, such as #FAIRdata, #metadata standards, #ontologies and more. 📥 Submit your proposal by 15 April: https://loom.ly/m6hEBcM

📣 BioHackathon Europe 2026 call for project proposals will open on 16 March (next Monday)! Get your project proposals ready 🚀! We look forward to seeing different innovative ideas in bioinformatics – it could be advancing the development of #opensource infrastructure, #FAIRdata standards or training. 🎯 The project election criteria are now on the website. Expression of interest for in-person attendance opens end of June. Check the website for more information: https://loom.ly/m6hEBcM

💬 “The question of how to develop sustainability for open biodata resources is not a new challenge and has long been recognised as key to the future of research. But ever advancing technologies, an increasing user base and growing levels of funding uncertainty have thrown fresh light on the urgency of GBC’s mission.”  In our latest blog, Guy Cochrane, Scientific Head of GBC, discusses why securing the sustainability of biodata resources is now more important than ever. With open biodata resources playing an ever more crucial role across fields including human health, biodiversity conservation and food sustainability, Guy discusses the urgent need for establishing sustainability models which pave the way for a sustainable future for open access biodata. https://lnkd.in/ervKa3qm #ScienceIsGlobal #Bioinformatics #GlobalBodataCoalition #BigData

📣 The EOSC-ENTRUST project has published its 2️⃣ second policy brief, highlighting the #federation and governance approaches needed to create a trustworthy research infrastructure on top of the #interoperable network of #TrustedResearchEnvironments (TREs). ✨ The brief presents four recommendations to support the development of a sustainable and trustworthy TRE ecosystem in Europe 🌍: 🔵 Adopt a federated approach and plan for a federation-of-federations 🔵 Design governance models alongside infrastructure, not afterwards 🔵 Invest in accreditation, including both training and assessment, to create trust 🔵 Consider co-locating major data and compute infrastructure investments Read the summary news: https://loom.ly/N1y07a0 EOSC Association

Following the passing of Phil Bourne on 8 March 2026, ELIXIR remembers with gratitude a long-standing supporter, collaborator and advocate for open science. Phil joined the ELIXIR Scientific Advisory Board in November 2019 and served as Vice-Chair from February 2023 to February 2026. We greatly valued his thoughtful reviews of ELIXIR Nodes and Scientific Programme activities, and the insight and perspective he shared so consistently. Phil will be remembered with gratitude and admiration for the wisdom, encouragement and commitment he brought to ELIXIR over many years. https://loom.ly/Gz3oYbg

📣 Last week, the GDI project held a three-day hackathon, bringing together experts from the EU #1MGenomes signatory countries to 🎯work on advancing technical capability for #secure and #federated human genomic data 🧬 management compliant with the 1+MG Framework. The federated network was tested by demonstration from each country and harmonising the deployments to enable federated gene variant lookups in the next stage. ⭐️ Many of the European countries involved now have at least one service technically integrated into the user portal at the European level in a staging environment, and some also in a production-like environment. These new services enable data discovery using a genome allele frequency browser and a dataset catalogue. ✨ This is an important milestone in the 1+MG initiative, which will enable Europe to move forward on establishing an operational federated Genomic Data Infrastructure. The increased technical capability enables research 🔬 to create real value from the Genome of Europe data. Following the hackathon, the 1+MG initiative signatory countries will need to decide to take services into production during the spring. The 1+MG initiative is making a federated network of human genomic data across Europe a reality while keeping safeguards and trust 🔐at the centre.

✨ The next #ELIXIR_3DBioInfo webinar will focus on computational #biophysics. 🗓️ 10 March 2026 | 🕔 17:00-18:00 CET Join the webinar to hear the recent activities in the Community, including dark energy in functional #protein and fold-switching behaviour of RfaH. More information and registration 👉 https://loom.ly/ctFNLug ISCB - International Society for Computational Biology

Join us this week with Noemi Tejera, PhD, Fani Mantzouridou, and Maria Traka to learn how to submit #metabolomics datasets to MetaboLights, including key metadata standards and best practices to ensure your data are #FAIR. This webinar is part of the FAIRferm project under the ELIXIR Scientific Programme.

🐄 A new ELIXIR Community has been established to advance research linking #genomes and #phenomes in domestic animals. The #DomesticAnimals Genome and Phenome Community connects researchers and data scientists working across species and countries to accelerate 🧬 genome-to-phenome research. 🎯 It aims to develop a coordinated, open and standardised data life cycle for domestic animal research. The Community builds on the global Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes (FAANG) Consortium, EuroFAANG RI, European infrastructures for farmed animal phenotyping, and nationally funded initiatives for farmed and companion animals. Read the news 👉 https://loom.ly/sGYRADY

🔒 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐭: 𝐓𝐨𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐅𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝, 𝐂𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞.𝐍𝐁𝐈 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐝 In a world where sensitive data - from omics to biodiversity to geospatial information - must be protected, SPEs and Trusted Research Environments (TREs) are imperative to conduct secure research. Our latest whitepaper explains how this is enabled by the de.NBI Cloud: 🔹 SPEs combine access control, auditability, and technical safeguards in isolated, use‑case‑specific environments. 🔹 EU & German frameworks (EHDS, GDNG, §64e SGB V) provide legal foundations and requirements for broad yet secure data access, positioning national clouds like de.NBI Cloud as authorized processing hubs. 🔹 Beyond health: SPEs are equally vital for ecological, socio‑economic, and critical‑infrastructure datasets where leakage risks are high. 🔹 de.NBI Cloud is a federated private cloud with ISO 27001‑certified nodes, GDPR‑compliant access, and alignment with EHDS, EOSC Association, EOSC ENTRUST, and ELIXIR providing a common platform for a scalable, interoperable national ecosystem. ➡️ Dive into the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/errT4B5G #DataSecurity #SPE #TRE #GDPR #EHDS #DeNBICloud #DigitalHealth #DataGovernance #EuropeanResearch #HealthDataSpace #ELIXIR #EOSC #Cybersecurity #OpenScience