Hackathon dates: April 28th-29th, 2021 (12:00 - 16:00 UTC each day)
Location: Online
Organisers: Nicola Mulder (UCT), Vera Matser (EMBL-EBI), Saskia Hiltemann (EMC), Marta Lloret Llinares (EMBL-EBI), Mamana Mbiyavanga (UCT)
Contact: Mamana Mbiyavanga & Marta Lloret Llinares

Overview

CINECA’s vision of a federated cloud enabled infrastructure making population scale genomic and biomolecular data accessible across international borders can only be achieved by building on community standards and adhering to FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable).

The “How FAIR are you” webinar series and hackathon aim at increasing and facilitating the uptake of FAIR approaches into software, training materials and cohort data, to facilitate responsible and ethical data and resource sharing and implementation of federated applications for data analysis.

The hackathon will be a practical online event to investigate gaps in the application of FAIR principles to project outputs and facilitate the implementation of FAIR approaches, where possible. The Hackathon will focus on cohort data, software tools including workflows, algorithms as well as web services, and training materials. The hackathon will be preceded by a “How FAIR are you” webinar series to provide background and introduce theoretical concepts that might be useful during the practical sessions. All participants are encouraged to attend or watch the recordings of the webinar series.

Format of the Hackathon

This hackathon will be an online event and will run over 2 days for 4 hours each day. The participants will be grouped into 3 streams: cohort metadata, software tools and training materials. Each stream will discuss current practices and recommendations for moving towards a practical application of FAIR principles and will explore the FAIRness of participants’ resources using assessment tools. Additional CINECA staff will be on hand for questions.

The cohort data stream will look at assessment using FAIR indicators. On the first day, we will demonstrate how to assess cohort data using examples from EMBL-EBI BioSamples and the FAIRplus project, as well as an H3Africa cohort in EGA. Participants will then evaluate their own cohort data. We will discuss what works well or not, and compare results between attendees. On the second day, we will start by identifying at least one practical solution per dataset to improve the FAR level. Finally, we will produce a set of recommendations to improve assessment indicators and practical next steps for data owners, which we will report back on.

Related "How FAIR are you" webinars:

Other resources:

Data stewardship wizard (https://registry.ds-wizard.org)

The training materials stream will recap key points from the webinar and identify different categories of participants, those wanting to make their lecture FAIR, those wishing to make a whole set of course materials FAIR, and those responsible for organizing courses taught by others and who want to assess FAIRness of the materials. Participants will assess the FAIRness of their materials with guidance, using a questionnaire. The group will discuss appropriate metrics for training materials and identify gaps and challenges. After the assessment, they will discuss how to go about increasing FAIRness.

Related "How FAIR are you" webinar:

The software tools stream will introduce existing tools for assessing software FAIRness and discuss metrics for FAIRness. Participants will run some of their existing software through the tools to determine FAIRness and measure compliance with FAIR principles. The group will discuss gaps, understand why it is crucial to make software FAIR, and learn about how to make software FAIR in future.

Related "How FAIR are you" webinar:

Other resources:

Five recommendations for FAIR software (https://fair-software.eu/)
Python package to analyze a GitHub or GitLab repository's compliance with the fair-software.eu recommendations (https://github.com/fair-software/howfairis)

AGENDA

DAY 1: April 28th, 2021 (12:00 - 16:00 UCT) Introduction and overview, move to breakouts: after some demos on use cases, work in groups to assess specific user resources (training, software or cohort data) for their FAIRness, end with webinar on FAIR in CINECA
12:00	Plenary	Introductions & Aims	Nicola Mulder (CINECA, UCT)
12:15	Plenary	How to measure FAIR. Experiences within FAIRplus (Recording)	Jolanda Strubel (FAIRplus, The Hyve)
12:45	Breakouts	Cohort data	Facilitators
		Training material
		Software tools
13:45	Break
14:00	Breakouts continued	Work with your own data/resources	Facilitators
14:30	Breakout report backs & discussion		All participants
15:00	Webinar	Application of FAIR Principles in the CINECA project (Recording, Slides)	Thomas Keane (CINECA, EMBL-EBI)
DAY 2: April 29th, 2021 (12:00 - 16:00 UTC) Breakouts will focus on issues identified on Day 1 and how participants can improve the FAIRness of their resource. There will be group discussions and an opportunity to work on registering resources in FAIRsharing when ready.
12:00	Plenary	Regroup & FAIRsharing talk (Slides, Recording)	Allyson Lister (FAIRsharing, Oxf)
12:30	Breakouts on next steps	Cohort data	Facilitators
		Training material
		Software tools
13:30	Break
14:00	Breakout report backs	General issues etc	Facilitators
14:30	Mini talks	Participants share what they learnt for their resource	All participants
14:45	Talk	FAIRplus fairification wizard (Recording)	Fuqi Xu (EMBL-EBI) & Isuru Liyanage (CINECA, EMBL-EBI)
15:15	Hands-on work/Discussion	Registering in FAIRsharing or other resources	All participants
15:45	Discussion & wrap up		All participants

Hackathon application process

Please fill out the registration form to sign up for this hackathon.

Who is the intended audience for the hackathon?

The hackathon will benefit any researchers interested to learn practical approaches to operationalise the FAIR principles. The event is open to CINECA partners, the EU-Can projects, and the whole scientific community.

Key dates

Hackathon dates: 28-29 April 2021 (12:00 - 16:00 UTC each day)
Registration deadline: 10 April 2021

About CINECA

The CINECA (Common Infrastructure for National Cohorts in Europe, Canada, and Africa) project aims to develop a federated cloud-enabled infrastructure to make population-scale genomic and biomolecular data accessible across international borders, to accelerate research, and improve the health of individuals across continents. CINECA will leverage international investment in human cohort studies from Europe, Canada, and Africa to deliver a paradigm shift of federated research and clinical applications. The CINECA consortium will create one of the largest cross-continental implementations of human genetic and phenotypic data federation and interoperability with a focus on common (complex) disease, one of the world’s most significant health burdens. CINECA has assembled a virtual cohort of 1.4M individuals from population, longitudinal and disease studies. Federated analyses will deliver new scientific knowledge, harmonisation strategies and the necessary ELSI framework supporting data exchange across legal jurisdictions enabling federated analyses in the cloud. CINECA will provide a template to achieve virtual longitudinal and disease-specific cohorts of millions of samples, to advance benefits to patients. It will leverage partner membership of standards and infrastructures like the Global Alliance for Global Health, BBMRI, ELIXIR, and EOSC driving the state of the art in standards development, technical implementation and FAIR data.

“How FAIR are you” Hackathon