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.

WP9-WP11 ENVRI-FAIR technical meeting

Cancelled | Ostend, 16-17 March 2020. 

Scope

The purpose of this 2-day meeting is to:

1) Advance in the coordination and implementation of tasks and activities foreseen by the H2020 ENVRI-FAIR project in WP9 and WP11;

2) Highlight synergies among Work Packages and with other LifeWatch ERIC Initiatives;

3) Solve possible bottlenecks.

Location

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

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: Empowering Biodiversity Research Conference II

Empowering Biodiversity Research Conference

Due to the current global COVID-19 crisis, the Empowering Biodiversity Research Conference has been postponed to 2021. 

Tervuren, Belgium, 14-15 May 2020.  Five years after the “Empowering Biodiversity Research” conference organized in May 2015, we would like to invite to the 2020 Conference on Biodiversity Informatics, for a new journey into the world of biodiversity data standards and tools. Projects that started five years ago are about to deliver what was promised and many new biodiversity informatics related projects have launched since then. Concepts such as Open Data, Open Access and Open Science are now increasingly recognised across disciplines and are changing the way science is conducted.

The time has come to find out what happened since our last conference! Let’s also look together at what is likely to happen next in the world of Biodiversity Informatics! So get ready for this fascinating conference which will take place at the AfricaMuseum, Tervuren, Belgium, on 14 and 15 May 2020. The objectives of the conference are to:

  • Explore and discuss the opportunities and strengths related to Biodiversity Informatics and Open Data & Open Science
  • Learn about Belgian research projects using biodiversity informatics tools to enhance their results
  • Network with fellow biodiversity scientists.

LifeWatch Belgium is one of the organisers, along with the Belgian Biodiversity Platform, the AfricaMuseum, the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), the Meise Botanic Garden (Meise), Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Université of Liège (ULiège), the VIB and the Belgian Science Policy Office (Belspo). 

For more information visit the conference website, click here for the programme,  check out the before and after workshops,  or go dirctly to registrations. 

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.       

S4BioDiv 2020

Bolzano, Italy, 16 September, 2020. The S4BioDiv 3rd International Workshop on Semantics for Biodiversity 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 2020.


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 focus will be on presenting challenging issues and solutions for the design of high-quality biodiversity information systems leveraging Semantic Web techniques.

Click here for conference details and important dates.

Space and the 2030 SDGs

Online, 9 October 2020.  Today, from 12:00 to 14:00, LifeWatch ERIC CTO Juan Miguel González-Aranda will feature in a discussion to frame the contribution of space applications to the attainment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

By and large, space is not strongly referenced in the SDGs currently, and there needs to be a stronger articulation of the role and contribution of EU support mechanisms. Today’s workshop provides an opportunity to inform and educate the SDG leadership on how space fits in the overall scheme of delivering on the SDGs and Agenda 2030. The discussion, therefore will focus on broad technological principles.

The European Union, the United Nations and many other stakeholders have recognised the transformative nature of digital technologies and have committed to growing the digital economy globally. Clearly, this will comprise different applications and different manifestations in different parts of the world. This workshop will consider the theme of resilience in all its forms and how space can aid capacity building to achieve greater resilience, through the creation of partnerships and collaborations that will allow future space innovations to prosper. 

Please register for this ScienceDigital@UNGA75 event here. 

Agenda:

  • 12h00 Declan Kirrane, Chair, ScienceDigital@UNGA75
  • 12h10 Niall Smith, Head of Research / Head of Blackrock Castle Observatory, Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland
  • 12h30 Thorsten Rudolph; AZO Space, Germany
  • 12h45 Juan Miguel González-Aranda, Chief Technology Officer, LifeWatch ERIC, Spain
  • 13h00 Francisco Colomer, Director, Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE), Netherlands
  • 13h15 Milind Pimprikar, CANEUS International, Canada
  • 13h30 Oscar Horacio Aguilar Colindres, Permanent Observer for the Fund for the Development of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC)
  • 13h45 Discussion
  • 14h00 Conclusion.

LifeWatch Belgium 2nd Users & Stakeholders Meeting

Online, 15-16 October 2020. Due to the current Covid-19 situation, this year’s edition of the LifeWatch Users & Stakeholders Meeting will be entirely online!

On Day One, 15th October, the Belgian LifeWatch partners will bring a series of user stories, while on Day Two, 16th October,, specific aspects of the Belgian LifeWatch infrastructure will be demonstrated.

Registration is mandatory. Please register here. After registration you will receive a personal Zoom link that will be valid for both days.

Agenda:

Day One – Thursday October 15th 2020: User stories

10:00-10:20:    General introduction LifeWatch Belgium

10:20-10:35:    The World Ocean Assessment, a global exercise supported by the LifeWatch Species Information Backbone (Leen Vandepitte, VLIZ)

10:35-10:50:    Downstream migration through a shipping canal: challenges on the road (Jenna Vergeynst, UGent)

10:50-11:00:    Interactive questionnaire: which training is needed in the future?

11:00-11:15:    Comparison of methods to model species habitat networks for decision-making in nature conservation: the case of the wildcat in southern Belgium (Axel Bourdouxhe, LifeWatch-WB)

11:15-11:30:    mARS/POLA3R (Biodiversity.aq)

11:30-11:45:    The need for accurate and comprehensive DNA sequence databases to reliably identify species of policy concern (Kenny Meganck and Sophie Gombeer, BopCo)

11:45-12:00:    15 minutes of questions

12:00-12:10:    Closure of day 1 (outlook, prospects)

Day Two – Friday October 16th 2020: Demonstrations

10:00-10:05:    Short introduction

10:05-10:25:    LifeWatch data R package (VLIZ)

10:25-10:45:    Agouti: A platform for managing wildlife camera-trapping projects (INBO)

10:45-11:05:    Exploring the landscape via the ecotopes with GIS software (LifeWatch-WB)

11:05-11:25:    POLA3R (Biodiversity.aq)

11:25-11:45:    The process of DNA-based species identification: bushmeat as a case story (BopCo)

Please don’t hesitate to circulate this event in your networks!

Click here to link to the agenda.