Planned as part of the escalation of online communications, LifeWatch Polls is a new initiative launched at the beginning of April 2020 by the infrastructure on Twitter to further connect with its scientific community.
The inspiration from the start was to understand the needs of scientists and to engage them in the development of the research infrastructure. Moreover, the initiative was thought of in an unprecedented time of our history, the COVID-19 pandemic, during which many scientists experienced limitations to their normal activity, and have had to adapt and find alternative solutions for their work.
Now reaching its fifth edition, the LifeWatch poll has been relaunching debates on hot topics and trying to understand the implications of the lockdown for ecologists and biologists in their field work, and if and how open access data repositories are used. Every poll is accompanied by a ‘Did You Know’ #DYK page with plenty of useful resources on the topics dealt with.
The #LWpoll on 6th May delved into the scale of biodiversity research, trying to catch a glimpse of which the most investigated domains are. In the spirit of two-way communication, quite apart from the many replies and Retweets, we’d welcome an email to suggest more topics. Previous polls:
Do you consider viruses to be part of biodiversity? See results here.
If you cannot do field research, what are your alternatives? See results here.
Have you ever shared datasets/databases in an open data repository? See results here.
At what scale are you currently focusing your research? See results here.
LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre Director Alberto Basset and CTO Juan Miguel González-Aranda have contributed to a recently-published paper that addresses today’s environmental challenges, entitled “Towards a Comprehensive & Integrated Strategy of the European Marine Research Infrastructures for Ocean Observations”, published in Frontiers in Marine Science.
Addressing environmental challenges is crucial for humanity and for life on Earth, and will depend on accurate information about fundamental processes in the geosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere, and their interactions. Marine Research Infrastructures (RIs) are key tools for understanding these complexities and interrelationships through multi-, inter-disciplinary approaches, because they constitute a dynamic long-term infrastructure framework, supported by European and national funds, to facilitate research, and provide highly accurate data and services.
Collaboration is essential to provide solutions to complex issues that cannot be solved by one partner alone. Europe has the resources and capacity to make comprehensive ocean observations for the benefit of society, and collaboration between RIs is emphasizing the development of multi-sensor technologies and the adoption of multi-parameter and interoperable methodologies for integrated and sustained marine observations. Click here to download the article.
When the ‘European Research Infrastructures for a smarter future’ conference originally planned for 19-20 March in Zagreb by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education, had to be cancelled because of public health concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, a digital conference sprang up to take its place. Held online on Friday 15 May, 2020, the international event attracted representatives of Research Infrastructures and policy makers from all over Europe.
LifeWatch ERIC CEO Christos Arvanitidis featured as the first contributor to the morning panel on ‘Research Infrastructures and the European strategic agendas – Green Deal and Energy Transition’. Research Infrastructures, he argued, are organically linked to the European Green Deal Roadmap objectives, as they are tools for science offering the ideal environment to boost integration, community de-fragmentation, and innovation and growth. This, together with cross-domain integration, is of a key relevance on the road towards cleaner energy, more sustainable industry and mobility, reducing pollution and preserving biodiversity. Disruptive technologies also play a pivotal role in addressing the above goals. LifeWatch ERIC, for instance, offers blockchain technology for linking and managing open access data (LifeBlock) and develops the technical layer for the composability of its web services (LifeWatch ERIC Tesseract) towards reproducible analytics. Both technologies play an instrumental role in advancing science and in breaking current barriers between disciplines.
“Research Infrastructures will be critical in assisting the European Union to deliver on commitments to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and deliver science based and nature based solutions to global challenges” he said. “The challenges we are facing are at the same time scientific, technical, societal, cultural, therefore further progress will depend on breaking through traditional barriers and effecting a change in our culture. Synergies at national and regional levels, with industry and business, will be better able to capitalise on this synthetic knowledge, as has been demonstrated in Andalusia, with the ERDF recources”.
The panel on The Green Deal and Energy Transition, was moderated by Inmaculada Figueroa, Vice Deputy Director General for the Internationalisation of Science and Innovation, Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain and ESFRI Vice-Chair, and also featured interventions from Sverre Quale, Director of ECCSEL ERIC; Tonci Tadic, Head of the Croatian Fusion Unit at the Ruder Boškovič Institute; and Jana Kolar, Executive Director of CERIC-ERIC. Click here for details of the ESFRI White Paper ‘Making Science Happen’.
The conference continued touching other key topics for Research Infrastructures their contribution for Regional Development and in the fight against COVID-19, presenting ESFRI White Paper ‘Making Science Happen – a new ambition for Research Infrastructures in the European Research Area’, leading to the policy panel European Research Infrastructures for a smarter future.
The European Training Network RIBES “River flow regulation, fish BEhaviour and Status”, funded by the European Commission under the EU Horizon 2020 programme Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network (Grant no. 860800), announces 15 positions for Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) giving the opportunity of being awarded a Doctoral Degree, with innovative complementary training activities and attractive travel, laboratory and research opportunities.
RIBES ESRs will be trained by international leaders in the interdisciplinary field of Ecohydraulics to find innovative solutions for freshwater fish protection and river continuity restoration in anthropogenically altered rivers within a European consortium of universities, research institutions and companies in Italy, Sweden, Germany, UK, Estonia and Belgium in an excellent scientific environment with state-of-the-art technologies.
The 15 ESRs will have access to a number of laboratory and field facilities, modelling techniques, experimental practices and instrumental technologies, to expand current understanding of fish bio-mechanical, behavioural and physiological processes, and to promote development of novel tools and management solutions in the area of freshwater fish protection, ameliorating passage of migratory fish species in regulated rivers.
The COVID-19 pandemic is hitting our society and citizens hard, in Europe and all over the world, generating a health crisis whose proportions and impacts have no precedent in recent history, and are yet to be fully understood. An emergency, that to be tackled requires institutional and science key actors to join forces and coordinate efforts and identify viable science-based approaches.
LifeWatch ERIC welcomed the initiative undertaken by ESFRI for “aggregating information about dedicated services offered by Research Infrastructures and communicating all relevant actions as broadly as possibly” on a unique web page where the information collected is clearly organised, immediately available and regularly updated.
LifeWatch ERIC submitted a proposal to the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation on a joint initiative, involving a group of international scientists with long-track experience in machine learning and modelling, to create dedicated epidemiology and data support services. Expected to become available in the next few months, the services will make it possible to:
• Implement a large set of scenario and model simulations to establish alternative trajectories of the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
• Perform an extensive sensitivity analysis to understand the major sources of uncertainty associated with model projections.
• Develop an on-line decision support system platform enabling individuals and stakeholders in the public and private sectors to make queries about risks in specific locations and time periods.
• Support the federation, provenance and accountability mechanisms associated with distributed (e-)Resources (databases, publications, media, software, etc.) through Blockchain-based technologies.
3rd International Workshop on Semantics for Biodiversity
The S4BioDiv 3rd International Workshop on Semantics for Biodiversity, to be held in Bolzano, Italy, on 16 September, has issued a call for papers. Authors are invited to submit for inclusion topics related the application and development of semantic technologies to support research in the biodiversity and related domains. In the light of the coronavirus crisis, the conference may need to be held virtually. The final format of the conference will be determined in June.
Biodiversity deals with heterogeneous data and concepts generated from a large number of disciplines in order to build a coherent picture of the extent of life on earth. The presence of such a myriad of data resources makes integrative biodiversity research increasingly important, as well as challenging given the variety of ways in which data and information are produced and made available. The Semantic Web approach enhances data discoverability, sharing, interoperability and integration through a formalized conceptual environment providing common formats, standards, and terminological resources.
The workshop, which is supported by LifeWatch ERIC, aims to bring together computer scientists and biologists, working on Semantic Web approaches for biodiversity, ecology and related areas such as plant sciences, agronomy, agroecology or citizen science related to biodiversity. The goal is to exchange experiences, build a state of the art of realizations and challenges, and reuse and adapt solutions that have been proposed in other domains. The workshop focuses will be on presenting challenging issues and solutions for the design of high-quality biodiversity information systems leveraging Semantic Web techniques.
The pan-European Workshop, held in Porto from 26 to 28 February, 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 three days was a plan with well-identified next steps towards the co-construction of the bioinformatic platform.
Transfiere is the biggest professional and multi-sectoral forum for knowledge and technology transfer to take place in Spain. From 12-13 February, the Palace of Fairs and Congress in Málaga FYCMA witnessed the gathering of the most relevant players in the national and international Research & Development & Innovation ecosystem.
Being part of Transfiere allowed the 1,600 participants to build networks of contacts, synergies and knowledge sharing in fields as diverse as Artificial intelligence and digital transformation, Public Administration, Internationalisation opportunities, and Investment and Open innovation.
At the LifeWatch ERIC stand, Giovanna Caputi, National Nodes Operations Manager, and Cristina Huertas-Olivares, International Initiatives and Projects Manager, interacted with delegates and disseminated information on the Infrastructure’s potential to facilitate interdisciplinary research in biodiversity and ecosystems.
In parallel, working meetings were held on new Workflows & VRE developments at the University of Málaga-Picasso HPC, part of LifeWatch ERIC ICT Core premises. Their coordinator, LifeWatch ERIC CTO Juan Miguel González-Aranda welcomed participants from LW ERIC international ICT Team, and introduced Professors Emilio López Zapata & José F. Aldana also considered reputed experts on HPC, Big Data & Artificial Intelligence at international level, who supported at technical level during the different sessions.
Felipe Romera, president of the Organizing Committee of Transfiere, was pleased that the two days of “much intensity” had provided a valuable meeting place for the Spanish innovation system and strategic sectors of the economy, both public and private.
The ENVRI-FAIR project brings together 26 Research Infrastructures to build sustainable, transparent and trustworthy data services compliant with FAIR principles. Once a year, ENVRI Week is dedicated to Environmental Research Infrastructures so that Working Parties can report on progress and seek guidance on future developments.
ENVRI Week 2020 was held in Dresden, Germany, from 3-7 February and attracted 40 participants. Morning plenary presentations broke into parallel sessions in the afternoon to address the requirements of the four subdomains: Atmosphere, Marine, Solid Earth and Terrestrial ecosystems & biodiversity.
For the first time a training event for data centre staff was featured, entitled ‘Terminologies for ENVRIs: Why, What & How’, presented by Clement Jonquet (University of Montpellier) and Markus Stocker (Knowledge Infrastructures research group), and also made available on Zoom.
WP6 of the Ecosystem & Biodiversity subdomain was tasked with providing relevant training materials. Maggie Hellström (ICOS) detailed the training needs analysis, the preparation of materials and the operation of the common platform. Lucia Vaira (LifeWatch ERIC) presented the improved user interface of the ENVRI FAIR training catalogue populated with training resources and materials related to FAIR Data Principles and Research Data Management, graded by difficulty level, and emphasised the need to create a feedback group to test and expand the catalogue
Nicola Fiore (LifeWatch ERIC) guided participants through the ENVRI community Training Platform resources, from Species Distribution Modelling to serious games, and from the ‘Why, What and How’ program, to the ENVRI-LifeWatch ERIC International Summer School Data Fairness, a new edition of which will be offered in 2020.
LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre Director Alberto Basset reported back to the plenary on the progress made in WP11 and Task Force experts from the Research Infrastructures present worked together to set objectives for the coming year. ENVRI Week demonstrated that European Research Institutes share the ideals of ground-breaking research, empowering users, democratised science, and improved data discoverability.
LifeWatch ERIC participated in the second Board Meeting of the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) at the invitation of the Swedish CAFF Chairmanship. The meeting, held on February 3-6, 2020 at the Gällivare Folkets Hus in Sweden, was attended by the LifeWatch ERIC e-infrastructure operation coordinator, Antonio José Sáenz-Albanés.
CAFF is the biodiversity working group of the Arctic Council, established in 1996 as a high-level governmental forum to address issues faced by the Arctic governments and the indigenous people of the Arctic. LifeWatch ERIC is involved in the CAFF Arctic Migratory Birds Initiative (AMBI).
LifeWatch ERIC supports AMBI in many ways, hosting in its Spanish premises the offices of the Coordinator of the African Eurasian Flyway, which seeks to improve the conservation and management of shorebird sites along their migration paths from the Arctic down to Africa, and supporting AMBI objectives and its engagement within the African continent and in particular in Guinea-Bissau.
As the Board Meeting progressed however, it became clear that Arctic ecosystems are facing challenges that LifeWatch ERIC is already addressing elsewhere, such as Arctic Invasive Alien Species for example, thus opening up further possibilities to collaborate and add value to a wide range of issues.
In this context, when Antonio José Sáenz-Albanés gave a presentation on LifeWatch ERIC’s state-of-art of ICT developments in Data FAIRness and workflows, some still under construction and deployment, and commitments to dealing with environmental hot topics, it was warmly welcomed.
The last day provided the opportunity to learn first-hand about the application of indigenous knowledge in managing biodiversity and ecosystem services by the Sámi people, also known as Saami or Lapps, who are native to northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola peninsula of Russia.
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