i5K Coordinating Group

January 18, 2023

11:00-12:00 EST

This will be a continuation of the last couple meetings, where considerable progress was made in re-visioning i5K.

Attending: Monica Poelchau, Glenn Hanes, Susan Brown, Duane McKenna, Marc Halfon, Meg Allen, Brad Coates, Robert Miller, Rob Waterhouse, Kristen Panfilio, Chris Childers, Josh Benoit, Sarthok Rahman, Anna Childers

Action items for next meeting (2/15):

  • All : review, the diagram that Kristen developed for our goals, and edit or provide suggestions (ask Monica if you need access): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CELNYFr_TTiZdzCzXAX0bcPEJZGS2ktN/edit#slide=id.p1
  • All : continue thinking about i5k vision and sub-goals
  • All : consider adding to the google doc that Rob started, with a list of resources for the i5k website: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AjLu9dFq1INdb0IhFUmveqvCsUeULlQyweJ4i-RrwnA/edit
  • All: Add to the brainstorming document on a possible paper/resource for insect-specific genome problems (e.g. ‘10 simple rules for not sequencing an insect genome’): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ddongjP313SrLbuukQlYIOHmMfh_1u7Q9z1tBHH7MRw/edit#
  • Josh: Reach out to Scott about an AGS2023 location pivot.
  • Monica, Brad, Kristen : Work on organizing goals for the categories that we signed up for.
  • Need a volunteer for this (perhaps Brad?) - Reach out to Lindsey Perkin to suggest an i5k talk next time at PAG, and/or a brief shout-out
  • Kristen (already done!) - take a stab at a visual schematic for the higher-level task categories, and share with the group (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CELNYFr_TTiZdzCzXAX0bcPEJZGS2ktN/edit#slide=id.p1)

  • Anna - take the lead on a possible paper/resource for insect-specific genome problems (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ddongjP313SrLbuukQlYIOHmMfh_1u7Q9z1tBHH7MRw/edit#).

  • Meetings [brief updates, if any]
    • PAG - 4 (!) Arthropod sessions this year - 3 arthropod, one honeybee. Lindsey is asking for speaker suggestions for next time. This would be a good place for i5k to get involved/give a talk. Suggest this to Lindsey?
    • Arthropod Genomics Symposium 2023 (Josh). Space problems - reserved space has water damage that may not be repaired in time (incl. dorm rooms). University is dealing with water main bursts, and so may pull back funds. Josh will give us an update in a week or two. He will also reach out to Scott if it’s still possible to host at University of Tennessee Knoxville. We will likely need to quickly pivot. There may be a possibility for the University of Cincinnati to host next year (2024).
  • AGS-X 2023 (web page TBA)
    • March: insects as food (Brenda Oppert)
    • April: Beenome (Jay Evans)
    • May: Arthropod genomics technologies (Lindsey Perkin, Zach Cohen)
  • Publications [brief updates, if needed]
    • Ag100Pest (Anna): Genome publications continue to progress well. No large comparative papers are much beyond concept stage right now. One Beenome paper may be coming out now. Could explore a special issue/section in the future, but hard to predict right now.
  • EBP Update (Anna). Regarding EBP, they have adopted a new governance model and are working to nominate people for the new committees (to increase diversity). These are open to anyone so if you are interested feel free to nominate yourself. Reach out to Nicollete/Anna/Harris Lewin if you’re interested.
    • The Temporary Nominations Committee is seeking nominations for the Permanent Nominations Committee, as an initial step toward the permanent governance structure. Of note, the pool of candidates for this Committee is drawn from the EBP affiliated project representatives and EBP committee members. Self-nominations accepted. Please see the attached file for the list of potential candidates; I’ve divided them regionally as we are seeking global representation. Please send nominations to Sadye Paez with me cc’d by Wednesday, January 18th spaez@rockefeller.edu ncaperello@ucdavis.edu
    • Section 4.5 of the newly approved governance document details the Nominations Committee and states “The Nominations Committee shall provide at least twice as many nominees as there are openings for a position. In making nominations and recommendations, the Nominating Committee shall ensure that it provides for broad diversity, including but not necessarily limited to diversity of geographical origin, culture, gender, indigenous origin, and academic field.” We hope that with your expertise and knowledge of the EBP community you will be able to provide outstanding candidates for the Nomination Committee, keeping in mind its important responsibility of filling critical EBP leadership positions, such as the Executive Council and Chair.
    • Things are progressing well on new genomes and they are working hard to get JGI and BGI genomes reflected in the GOAT database.

Visioning 2023 (Sue, Monica, Brad)

  • Fine-tune vision - any updates based on the identified community needs
    • Current vision statement is quite broad - which can be good. Anything from the list could fit in there
    • What the vision doesn’t do is give us the subgoals. We haven’t had concrete goals in the past.
    • Do we also need a mission statement?
  • Discussion notes:
    • Need to always keep in mind that we are limited in personnel. That should also be reflected in our goals.
    • Can we weight the comments/suggestions by frequency to gauge importance
    • Can we filter this by who we have who has experience? In order to make a decision on what we can do. Perhaps have a ‘champion’ for each larger goal - essentially, someone who cares.
    • Also make sure we have a point person for individual communities - we have that to some extent, but make sure we have all those communities included
    • What will happen after we have the vision and new goals?
    • Do we need a formal governance document (similar to what EBP and ERGA have done)? It might not hurt to be more formal than we’ve been so far
    • Need to consider whether to explore funding (e.g. RCN)
    • We need to work harder to get participation from major groups working on insect genomics, even if it isn’t at a monthly meeting, perhaps at quarterly meetings with a focus on cross-talk.
    • Being more formal may help recruit more people
    • Is there a need to write a paper on how insects can be sequenced? What makes insects different? (Evolutionary time; insect size/DNA yield; breeding…). Sounds like there is a need for this… Start a google doc for brainstorming.
    • Visual schematic between categories may be helpful - Kristen will take a stab at this
      • Keep our position in the midst of the larger, funded projects in mind (who actually have money to do the work)

NEXT MEETING: February 15, 2023

11:00-12:00 EST