INTERVIEW
Enabling Technologies Hotels Programme: looking back and into the future
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Image: Tractography representation of the neural fiber tracts in the mouse brain,
created at one of the DTL Technology Hotels: the Preclinical Imaging Centre Radboudumc
(Image credit: Valerio Zerbi)
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ZonMw has recently announced which projects will be funded in the fourth call of the Enabling Technologies Hotels (ETH) programme. Dr Martijntje Bakker (ZonMw) and Professor Alain van Gool (Radboudumc) comment on the results of the call.
Van Gool explains: “Technology Hotels are expert groups that offer their high-end technologies and the associated expertise and infrastructure to researchers who do not have access to such facilities. DTL’s searchable catalogue of Technology Hotels enables you to quickly locate an expert group. Life scientists can obtain funding to execute a research project at a Technology Hotel through the ETH programme. The fourth call closed in August 2017.” Read more.
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DATA
FAIR Data, Open Science, Research Data Management
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Personal Health Train manifesto and nomination
The Personal Health Train (PHT) consortium has composed a manifesto, for a concerted action to dovetail FAIR data and services in healthcare and biomedical science. The manifesto is a formal statement of the principles that guide the PHT development. You can read and sign the manifesto online. The PHT initiative has also been nominated for the Dutch Privacy Awards 2018.
FAIR metrics published
A team of FAIR principles authors and drivers have published a core set of semi-quantitative metrics for the evaluation of FAIRness. “One of the big questions around the FAIR principles has been how to measure what we call their ‘FAIRness’. This paper takes an important first step in that direction, and will serve as a springboard for community discussion and eventual adoption of a common set of metrics,” says Michel Dumontier of Maastricht University. Read more.
Recordings FAIR workshop in Ireland
In December 2017, a team from DTL and FAIRdICT delivered a FAIR Data workshop at the Irish Health Research Board in Dublin. The event taught 70 researchers at different career stages what the FAIR Data Principles mean and how implementing them can ease the day-to-day work load in data-intensive research projects. You can watch the recordings and read more online.
KNAW Advisory Report released
On 15 January 2018, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) released an advisory report ‘Replication studies – Improving reproducibility in the empirical sciences’. Its main message is that the systematic replication of other researchers’ work should be an ordinary part of science. One of the recommendations is that journals and funding agencies should require storage of study data and methods in accessible repositories. Read more.
GO FAIR Office established
In order to take a step closer towards the realisation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), Germany, France, and the Netherlands are setting up the International Support and Coordination Office to support the GO FAIR Initiative. Read more.
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TECHNOLOGIES
From Omics to Bioimaging to Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
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60 Projects get access to DTL Technology Hotels
As you can read in the interview at the top of this newsletter, ZonMw has released a list of 60 projects that will be funded in the fourth call of the Enabling Technologies Hotels (ETH) programme. In the ETH programme, life science researchers can apply for funding to get access to the high-end equipment and expertise of 130+ Technology Hotels that are listed on the DTL website. Read more.
Netherlands X-omics Initiative video
Did you already see the X-omics video? The Netherlands X-omics Initiative (pronounce: cross-omics) aims to radically improve technological approaches to study biomolecules. This will help researchers understand the fundamentals of life, which is crucial to unravel mechanisms of health and disease.
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The DTL website features a catalogue of 130+ Technology Hotels. These are expert groups that offer their high-end technologies, expertise, and infrastructure to researchers who do not have access to such facilities. Please contact Merlijn van Rijswijk for more information about the DTL Technologies programme.
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LEARNING
Training and Education related to Life Science Data and Technologies
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Training for Technology Hotel projects
As you can read in this newsletter, ZonMw has released a list of 60 projects that will be funded in the fourth call of the Enabling Technologies Hotels programme. DTL will organise FAIR data training for these 60 projects. A plenary information meeting will be held in the end of March in Utrecht.
ELIXIR Implementation Studies
In January 2018, two training-related Implementation Studies were started by ELIXIR. One study focuses on data stewardship training and the other one is about is about learning paths. ELIXIR-NL plays a major role in both. Read more.
ELIXIR Training presentation
As part of the session 'User engagement & Training', Celia van Gelder has given a presentation about ELIXIR Training at the EUDAT Conference 'Putting the EOSC vision into practice' in Porto on 22-25 January 2018. Information about the session can be found online.
5-6 April 2018: ELIXIR workshop
There will be a workshop 'Bridging bioinformatics and data science competency frameworks and their application to ELIXIR Training' in Amsterdam on 5-6 April 2018. The workshop is part of ELIXIR's Learning Paths Implementation Study. The organisers of the workshop are Celia van Gelder (ELXIIR-NL), Allegra Via (ELIXIR-IT), Vera Matser (BioExcel), and Gabriella Rustici (ELIXIR-UK).
26-31 August 2018: Transcriptomics Summer School
BioSB, ELIXIR-NL, LUMC, ELIXIR-BE, and VIB will organise the first Belgian-Dutch Transcriptomics and Single Cell RNA-Seq Analysis Summer School in Leuven, Belgium on 26-31 August 2018. The Summer School is an unmissable learning opportunity for all life scientists that work with transcriptomics data. Read more.
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The DTL course overview lists courses in the field of data and technologies for the life sciences. It is automatically transferred to ELIXIR's European training portal TeSS. Please contact Celia van Gelder if you want your training events and materials to be included or if you have questions about the DTL Learning programme.
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VARIA
Miscellaneous about DTL, ELIXIR-NL, and associated initiatives
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Image: Participants at last year's BioSB conference (Image credit: Bas van Breukelen).
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Five new partners
Five new organisations have joined the DTL partnership as of 1 January 2018: AMC, VUmc, Aridhia Informatics Ltd., LabServant B.V., and Equalis. As a result, our network now comprises all Dutch University Medical Centres, all Dutch universities with life science activities, eight research institutes, and around 30 life science companies. You can inspect the complete list of partners on our website.
Health-RI news
The Health Research Infrastructure initiative (Health-RI) is a joint initiative of DTL, ELIXIR-NL, BBMRI-NL, EATRIS-NL, NFU, and Health~Holland. On 8 December 2017, Gerrit Meijer (co-chair of the Health-RI steering committee) presented the Health-RI business plan at the Health-RI conference in the Jaarbeurs (Utrecht). The business plan is an ambitious yet realistic plan to assemble all stakeholders and create a sustainable infrastructure that will facilitate world-class personalised medicine & health research in the Netherlands. Read the business plan, have a look at the conference report, or read an interview with Gerrit Meijer.
7 February 2018: Webinar data protection law and GDPR
On 7 February, Regina Becker of ELIXIR Luxembourg will present a webinar on the requirements in data protection law and the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) implementation. Read more.
16 March 2018: Programmers Meeting
To encourage collaboration and communication between scientific programmers active in the Dutch life sciences field, DTL frequently organises Programmers Meetings in collaboration with SURF. The next meeting will take place on 16 March 2018. Read more.
15-16 May 2018: BioSB 2018
The 4th edition of the Dutch Bioinformatics & Systems Biology conference will take place on 15-16 May 2018 in Lunteren. BioSB 2018 will feature the latest developments in bioinformatics, systems and computational biology, and interrelated disciplines, and their wide-ranging applications in life sciences & health, agriculture, and food & nutrition. As in previous years, there will be several ELIXIR tracks, aiming to introduce Dutch bioinformatics services to researchers in the field. Read more.
4-7 June 2018: ELIXIR All Hands meeting
The fourth ELIXIR All Hands meeting will take place 4 -7 June 2018, bringing together members of the ELIXIR community from across the ELIXIR Nodes, and collaborators from partner organisations, in order to review ELIXIR achievements and activities so far and discuss plans for the future. The All Hands also acts as the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE Annual General Meeting. Read more.
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Please consult the DTL website for an overview of courses and events in the field of data and technologies for the life sciences. Please send an e-mail to communication@dtls.nl if you want your course or event to be included.
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PARTNER VARIA
News from our partners and collaborators
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A team from Wageningen University & Research (WUR) collaborates with several industrial partners in multi-genome mapping of commercial food potatoes. The potato pangenome will synergise the assembly information to contribute a comprehensive genomics view of the potato genome. The group, led by Dr Richard Finkers and Professor Richard Visser from WUR, is seeking other researchers from academia and industry to join the project to enrich the pan-genome analysis and thus better characterise the natural genetic diversity of the species. Read more.
On 22 January 2018, Vera van Noort, Professor of Computational Biology at Leiden University, gave her inaugural lecture. "Biologists today have to be able to work with big data. Data analysis skills should be taught from the start of the degree programme, or – even better – in secondary school," was her message. Read more.
A large consortium led by Radboudumc, the University of Tübingen, and the University of Leicester has received € 15 million funding to improve the diagnosis of rare diseases. Their project is called ‘Solve-RD‘ and is operating under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme. Read more.
On 12 January 2018, the TU Delft celebrated its 176th Dies Natalis. This year's theme was 'Open Science'. You can watch the recordings online. Read more.
The Executive Board of Utrecht University has granted the Utrecht Bioinformatics Center (UBC) an additional four years of support to further strengthen and position bioinformatics in Utrecht. Read more. The UBC has also announced that its High Performance Computing team has begun collaborating with DTL partner The Hyve, a Utrecht-based open source bioinformatics company. This is to provide more granularity and flexibility in providing access to massive data sets used by multiple researchers. Read more.
On 21 March 2018, DANS will organise an event dedicated to research data management, data archiving, and data re-use. The day will be particularly interesting for (young) scientists and data librarians. The event is organised together with the Young Academy of the KNAW and Promovendi Netwerk Nederland. Read more.
Professor Alain van Gool of Radboudumc will be a speaker at the International Conference on Perspectives in Precision Medicine (28 February - 1 March 2018 in Copenhagen). As a professor in personalised healthcare, Van Gool is interested in the application of biomarkers in translational medicine and personalised healthcare. You can read an interview with Van Gool in Bruker's 'Customer insights', where he talks about the work of his Translational Metabolic Laboratory, which is one of 130+ DTL Technology Hotels.
This year's Innovation4Health conference will take place in WTC Rotterdam on 1 February 2018. Barend Mons (GO FAIR) is one of the keynote speakers. Read more.
The JTC 2018 Call for Proposals ‘Transnational research projects on hypothesis-driven use of multi-omic integrated approaches for discovery of disease causes and/or functional validation in the context of rare diseases’ was launched recently. Aim is to help coordinate the research efforts of European countries in the field of rare diseases and implement the objectives of International Rare Disease Research Consortium. The deadline for submitting pre-proposals is 6 February 2018. Read more.
The Dutch Cancer Society has announced a new Supporting Facilities for Cancer research call. The Supporting Facilities Grant should give an impulse to existing or new infrastructure initiatives that support oncological scientific research. The call for pre-proposals will open on 5 March 2018. You can find more information on the KWF website.
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If your organisation is a DTL Partner, you can announce your news, events, courses, and job vacancies on the DTL website. Please send these items to communication@dtls.nl
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