GHGA on Tour: Fall Highlights

Participating in several conferences in September, GHGA members networked closely with various communities ranging from bioinformatic, research data infrastructure, to ethics scholars

At the European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) in Turku, Finland, our team member and Nextflow Ambassador Kübra Narcı co-led a hands-on workshop on nf-core, focusing on best practices for scalable and reproducible workflows. She also presented a poster on using Nextflow to develop FAIR-compliant somatic variant calling workflows, highlighting how these workflows improve reproducibility and interoperability in genomic research.

Similarly, at the German Conference on Bioinformatics (GCB) in Bielefeld, GHGA (represented by Kübra Narcı, Julia Leimeister, Sameesh Kher and Zehra Hazal Sezer) hosted a workshop on standardising and harmonising NGS analysis workflows. Here, we demonstrated how GHGA’s FAIR-compliant workflows support adaptability and scalability, offering participants a hands-on experience with Nextflow wokflows using nf-core tools and components.

Meanwhile, our ethics experts - Andreas Bruns and BoD Member Eva Winkler - discussed the topic of dynamic consent at the annual meeting of the Academy for Ethics in Medicine (AEM) in Tübingen. The presentation focused on whether this form of consent is necessary to provide patients with better control over the use of their data.

In addition, GHGA participated in the Status Conference on Data Competence Projects, where Vanessa Gonzalez Ribao co-moderated a workshop on the challenges and opportunities of managing personal data in research. The event was organised by BMBF and VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH and the discussions centred around sustainable solutions for research data management.

Across these events, we engaged with the respective communities, exchanged and built valuable connections.