The fifth Biohackathon Europe was held on 7-11 November 2022 in Paris, France. ELIXIR welcomed over 300 participants on-site and virtually from around the world. Over the week, participants worked collaboratively on 35 hacking projects covering a wide range of topics. The event received great comments from the participants, all surveyed participants would recommend this event to their colleagues.
Biohackathon Europe 2022 officially started with a keynote presentation given by Toshiaki Katayama. He gave a detailed introduction to BioHackathon in Japan, the inspiration for BioHackathon Europe, and highlighted key outcomes from previous BioHackathon events. Following the keynote, project leads gave short presentations of their projects outlining the aims and expected outcomes and the expertise needed for each project.
The 35 projects had a wide range of themes, from aligning food and nutrition study data to exploring the genomic wastewater surveillance ecosystem. Some projects focused on improving current research data management resources, including research data management in Galaxy and Data Stewardship Wizard as well as the RDMkit and FAIRCookbook. Several projects joined again this year after their success and fruitful outcomes in 2021, such as Project 11 Enhancement and Reusage of Biomedical Knowledge Graph Subsets and Project 18 MOWL: A library for Machine Learning with Ontologies. Both projects built on results from BioHackathon Europe 2021 and continued to enhance the tools developed.
As in previous years, the BioHackathon had many projects featuring the development of training materials and tools, some aimed to develop lessons for the ELIXIR software management plan, and others pulling together FAIR training materials. International collaboration is crucial when developing training, including material and tools and it is also a core element of the BioHackathon. Participants from Australian BioCommons worked, amongst others, with those from ELIXIR Nodes on Project 32 to develop FAIR training materials and Learning Paths.
The goal of Biohackathon Europe is to advance the development of different projects by collaborating during a week of intense work. According to our survey, 100% of surveyed participants think the event helped advance the outcomes of projects they were involved in. In addition, more than 80% of surveyed participants believe that the work they completed at the BioHackathon would have taken a month or even longer to complete.
To find out more about Biohackathon Europe 2022, please visit the BioHackathon Europe website. Take a look at this year’s projects and track their progress during the event by viewing #BioHackEU22 hashtag on Twitter. BioHackathon Europe 2023 will take place in November, the exact date and venue are to be confirmed.
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