Core members of the Bio-IT project
- Renato Alves, Bio-IT Project Coordinator, a member of the Gibson team
- Lisanna Paladin, Bio-IT Project Coordinator, a member of the Zeller team
The core members are mainly involved in training related activities such as developing, designing and organzing various courses. They provide bioinformatics support and consulting in a weekly drop-in session. They are also involved in organising outreach related activities such as Bio-IT beer sessions and others.
Community
The Bio-IT Project is a community initiative, which relies largely on voluntary contributions and involvement from members of EMBL Heidelberg’s computational biology community. The active members of the community and their area of expertise can be found in the Grassroots table.
The community members have initiated and are actively involved in several activities within Bio-IT, such as:
- EMBL Python User Group (EPUG): A biweekly meeting is organized at EMBL Heidelberg to discuss pyton-related topics, demonstrate tools and modules, and experiment with python-related soft- and hardware. To subscribe to notifications about future meetings & activities, check the info here.
- EMBL R User Group (emblr): Similarly to the Python one, a biweekly meeting is organized at EMBL Heidelberg to discuss R-related topics, demonstrate tools and modules, and experiment with python-related soft- and hardware. To subscribe to notifications about future meetings & activities, check the info here.
The Bio-IT community maintains a series of computational resources, available here.
Periodic activities have been organised in the past with the support of the Bio-IT community:
- Book Clubs: themed series of programming, statistics and coding clubs based on books - examples are the D3.js, the CSDA Machine Learning, the Basics of Statistics and Modern Statistics for Modern Biology book clubs. If you are interested in joining such activities, please contact Eva Maria Geissen (eva.geissen@embl.de) or Sarah Kaspar (sarah.kaspar@embl.de).
- Bio-IT Beer Sessions: series of meetings including a presentation with a technical focus, followed by an informal discussion (featuring beer and other refreshments). If interested, please contact bio-it@embl.de.
EMBL Centres
The EMBL Centers are ‘horizontal’, cross-departmental structures that promote innovative research projects across disciplines. Each centre is run by an expert in the specified area of data analysis, who are friendly and approachable. We highly recommend talking to the Centres if your project(s) are likely to involve any of their areas of expertise.
- Bioimage Analysis (CBA): The Centre for Bioimage Analysis supports scientists in extracting quantitative information from images acquired with light- or electron-microscopy.
- Biological Modelling (CBM): The Center for Biological Modelling aims to support people to adopt mathematical modeling techniques into their everyday research.
- Biomolecular Network Analysis (CBNA): The Center for Biomolecular Network Analysis disseminates expertise, know-how and guidance in network integration and analysis throughout EMBL.
- Statistical Data Analysis (CSDA): The Center for Statistical Data Analysis helps EMBL scientists to use adequate statistical methods for their specific technological or biological applications.
To receive updates about Centres activities and resources, we recommend that you sign up to their mailing lists, which can be done at mailing-list-sign-up.
Unit-specific support
Several of EMBL research units have a dedicated person/team of computational support staff. These people are here to help and to provide services/resources to their communities, and we highly recommend getting to know them. Following, the links to the computational support pages within each unit, refer to these pages for updated data about the referrers.
- Genome Biology (GB) - GBCS
- Cell Biology and Biophysics (CBB)
- Structural and Computational Biology (SCB)
- Developmental Biology (DB)
IT Services
Led by Dr. Rupert Lück, the IT services maintain EMBL’s IT resources and services.
Please contact them for support by email (itsupport@embl.de) or by opening a ticket in the support platform.
The new user quick start guide will help you configure your device to work at EMBL. If you are starting fully remotely, the VPN Setup Guide will guide you through the steps for remote access.
Bio-IT Taskforce
All of the people listed above, plus interested volunteers from the EMBL computational biology community, meet every two months as members of the Bio-IT taskforce.
In taskforce meetings, we discuss issues and ideas relating and relevant to the computational community here, such as new course ideas, hardware and software requirements, development of new resources and activities, etc.
The meetings are held using the Lean Coffee format, to ensure democratic selection/priority of agenda items and to prevent the group from spending too long focusing on one particular topic.
The taskforce is an open group of volunteers, and we are always happy to welcome new members. To be added to the mailing list, use mailing-list-sign-up. The Taskforce minutes can be consulted here.
Get involved
The Bio-IT community is a friendly, enthusiastic group who is always very happy to welcome new people who would like to get involved in Bio-IT activities. Some suggestions for ways in which you could get involved are listed on the Bio-IT portal.