International Summer School Data FAIRness

Lecce, Italy, 1–5 July 2019. The International Summer School Data FAIRness in Environmental and Earth science infrastructures: theory and practice is offered in conjunction with ENVRIPlus and focuses on modern semantic approaches to properly describing and interrelating different data sources in ways that reduce barriers to data discovery, integration, and exchange among biodiversity and ecosystem resources and researchers.

In recent years, one of the major challenges in Environmental and Earth Science has been managing and searching larger volumes of data, collected across multiple disciplines. Many different standards, approaches, and tools have been developed to support the phases of the Data Lifecycle (Data Acquisition, Data Curation, Data Publishing, Data Processing and Data Use). This five-day summer school concentrates on the specific Data FAIRness phase in Environmental and Earth sciences.

The course gathers together what are considered to be the most interesting perspectives of our time, to offer a cutting edge and high-quality programme, aimed at fostering a rich and lively intellectual exchange.

European Marine Biology Symposium

Dublin, Ireland, 25-29 August, 2019.  This year’s EMBS will be hosted by University College Dublin, in the state-of-the-art O’Brien Centre for Science.

The social programme will provide opportunities to sample the the city’s famous cultural life and explore the UNESCO Dublin Bay Biosphere.

2019 is the International Year of the Salmon, a fish that has a special place in the mythology of Ireland. Look out for salmon throughout the scientific and social programme.

The symposium themes are Blue growth, Rapid change, Movement and redistribution of species, and Fundamental biological traits. For more information click here.

ISEM 2019

alzburg, Austria, 1-5 October 2019. The 22nd biennial global conference of the International Society for Ecological Modelling (ISEM), will take place in the Salzburg Congress Centre the first week in October.

Under the theme of eco:model:spaces,  this international gathering will bring together scientists from all professions and applications that deal with the use of ecological models and systems ecology. 

Biodiversity_Next

Leiden, The Netherlands, 21-25 October, 2019, Biodiversity_Next is a conference that brings together, for the first time at this scale, major international organisations, research scientists, and policy makers to jointly identify socio-technical bottlenecks and horizon-scan opportunities around data-intensive biodiversity and geodiversity research.

Biodiversity_Next aims at:

  • Promoting innovation in biodiversity & geodiversity information science and applications;
  • Sharing and enhancing community data standards and information management practices;
  • Improving domain reach to new audiences (incl. scientific, policy and industry);
  • Inspiring new generations to more enthusiastically embark on data-intensive science around bio- and geo-diversity;
  • Building community consensus on pivotal technical and sociocultural aspects of the community practices.

More information on https://biodiversitynext.org/

Second Dahlem-type Workshop

Rome, Italy, 2-6 December 2019. 

The second Dahlem-Type workshop will focus on the technical implementation of those e-tools relevant for the validation cases agreed during the first workshop held in Seville.

The workshop will have two phases:

02-04/12/2019 | ICT technical meeting

05-06/12/2019 | Joint Discussion between ICT and Validation Cases experts

Online registrations are closed.

Transfiere 2020

Málaga, Spain, 12-13 February 2020. Transfiere is the biggest professional and multi-sectoral forum for knowledge and technology transfer in Spain, and gathers prominent players in the national and international Research & Development & Innovation ecosystem. Hosted at the Trade Fairs and Congress Centre, Málaga, this 9th European Meeting on Science, Technology and Innovation is the ideal place for research groups, businesses and governments to build networks, share knowledge and connect with strategic sectors of the economy.

The LifeWatch ERIC stand will showcase its innovative services in biodiversity and ecosystem research to the thousands of participants expected from around the world, and explore potential collaboration with universities, researchers, public administrations and entrepreneurs. A dedicated online networking tool will allow meetings to arranged prior to the event. This year, Canada will be the guest country, presenting the latest R & D & I in the networking, conference programme and commercial exhibition areas of the Forum.

For more information and registrations, click here.

Workshop: Online Bioinformatic Platforms to Support Metabarcoding and Metagenomics Research and Applications

Porto, Portugal, 26-28 February 2020. The pan-European Workshop, held in the Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources (CIBIO-InBIO) at the Vairão campus of the University of Porto, Portugal, boasted a very specific title: ‘Online Bioinformatic Platforms to Support Metabarcoding and Metagenomics Research and Applications’.

The workshop witnessed more than 30 participants from nine European countries (Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland) with different expertise and backgrounds, ranging from metagenomics and metabarcoding, to ecology and ICT.

The workshop was jointly organised with PORBIOTA/LifeWatch Portugal, DNAqua-Net (dedicated to the protection, preservation and restoration of aquatic ecosystems and their functions) and the EnvMetaGen project at InBIO (Research Network in Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology). LifeWatch ERIC supported its organisation as part of its Internal Joint Initiative on Non-indigenous and Invasive Species. The workshop explored the architecture and function of an online bioinformatics platform capable to address as many needs of the scientific community as possible, such as:

1) Checking existing distributed Bioinformatics e-Resources within the LifeWatch ERIC communities of practice,

2) Reaching a common understanding of users’ requirements and needs in Virtual Research Environments, and

3) Proposing an efficient and realistic and engaging mechanism from an ICT perspective, capable of federating those e-Resources within the LifeWatch ERIC VREs.

Examples of evidence-based research were provided by the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), MIRRI (Microbial Research Resource Infrastructure), ELIXIR (which unites Europe’s leading life science organisations in managing and safeguarding the ever-growing volumes of data generated), other Research Infrastructures and Bioinformatics initiatives.

The outcome of the Online Bioinformatic Platforms Workshop was a plan with well-identified next steps towards the co-construction of the bioinformatic platform.

Presentations:

Christos Arvanitidis | LifeWatch ERIC – mission and recent developments. Download PDF

Rocío Bautista | Bioinformatic analysis at SCBI. Download PDF

Pedro Beja | Next generation sequencing: Opportunities and challenges of a disruptive techmology for biodiversity assessment and monitoring. Download PDF

Bopco & JEMU | The Barcoding Facility for Organisms and Tissues of Policy Concern & The Joint Experimental Molecular Unit. Download PDF

CIBIO | Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources. Download PDF

CNR-IBIOM | Infrastructure, data and analysis resources. Download PDF

Day 2 Session 3 | What should be the characteristics of online bioinformatics platforms in LifeWatch ERIC? Download PDF

Mafalda Galhardo | Metabarcoding and data processing pipelines. Download PDF 

Juan Miguel González-Aranda |  Towards the establishment of a LifeWatch ERIC bioinformatics platform.  Download PDF

Tine Grebenc & Nataša Šibanc | Slovenian Forestry Institute. Download PDF

Matjaž Gregorič | Spider webs as a source of eDNA. Download PDF

Marta Goberna | Spanish Institute for Agricultural Research, Department of Environment and Agronomy. Download PDF

Pascal Hablützel | VLIZ’s ambition for online bioformatic platforms to support metabarcoding and metagenomics research. Download PDF 

Florian Leese | DNA-based aquatic bioassessment in Europe and beyond: Chances and challenges. Download PDF

Jennifer Leonard | Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics Group, Doñana. Download PDF

Florian Mauffrey | Development of a molecular diatoms index for water quality assessment of Swiss rivers.  Download PDF

Niklas Noll | Going through a metabarcoding workflow – pointing out problems and proposing solutions for a bioinformatics platform.  Download PDF

Alberto Pallavicini | Units of the Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste.  Download PDF

Christina Pavloudi & Haris Zafeiropoulos | LifeWatchGreece Hellenic Centre for Marine Research. Download PDF

Sergei Põlme | UNITE: Curated and evolving databases for molecular identification and for communicating fungal species. Download PDF

Blue Growth in the Black Sea Region

Constanta, Romania, 9-10 March 2020. The International Conference on Blue Growth in the Black Sea Region will take place in Romania from 9 to 10 March, under the theme: ‘Ecosystem Services on River-Sea Macro-ecosystems’.

The first of its kind, the conference is organised by the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organisation (BSEC), which came into existence as a model of multilateral political and economic initiative with the signing of the Istanbul Summit Declaration and the Bosphorus Statement by the Heads of State and Government of the countries in the region, on 25 June 1992.

Please refer to the website for more information.

NIS IJI Workflows Technical Meeting

Ostend, 16-17/03/2020  *Meeting has been moved online due to Covid-19 pandemic, new arrengements were communicated to participants.

Registration is free of charge and compulsory, please click here.

ScopeCompleting final scientific & users’ requirements to advance in the ICT developments for Workflows on Non indigenous-Invasive (Alien) Species -NIS- of the Internal Joint Initiative (IJI).

The purpose of this 2-day meeting is:

1) To go over IJI Workflow #1 ARMS+ ASSEMBLE final version review & approval.

2) To discuss other issues: Tesseracto_VRE & rest of workflows (#2 to #6) developments progress, etc.

When

16-17/03/2020

Where

Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ)
Spuikom & De Noordzee conference rooms – InnovOcean site (entrance: warehouse 61)
Wanderlaarkaai 7
8400 Ostend
Belgium

How to reach us? Click here

Agenda

Coming soon!

More info

https://www.lifewatch.eu/web/guest/iji-workflows-technical-meeting

Postponed: BEeS Conference

BEes

Ljubljana, Slovenia, 27-29 May 2020 was the original plan for the LifeWatch ERIC BEes Conference, which has been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not possible to organise an international conference and ensure the safety of participants in the current conditions, and we are following the guidance of national and global health advice.

Please do not to make any travel or accomodationn arrangements for this event. We thank all you potential participants for your patience and interest, but now is the time for us all to put our strengths together to fight this pandemic. New dates and conference details will be communicated as soon as possible.