AGENDA

i5K Coordinating Group

17 July 2024

11:00-12:00 EDT

Meeting Chair: Monica Poelchau

Attending: Kevin Hackett, Glenn Hanes, Monica Poelchau, Mary Ann McDowell, Anna Childers, Rena Schweizer, Terrence Sylvester, Sarthok Rahman, Michael Branstetter, Chris Childers

Regrets: Marc Halfon, Brad Coates, Duane McKenna

  • Approval of previous meeting’s minutes.
  • New member introductions
  • CC member cameo of the month: Sarthok Rahman
  • Working group highlights (can change order)
    • Community building and outreach (Brad)
      • AGS2025 planning - Brad reached out to several people who had expressed interest in hosting in the past. Otherwise, we may want to consider partnering with Giga.
    • Standards (Monica)
      • Continuing white paper write-up
    • Exec committee (Monica)
      • Website updates
        • Brad, Anna, Chris, Monica worked on website updates prior to AGS2024
        • Need to ask working group leads about mission/vision/goal statements for website
    • Training (Sue)
    • Genome Project Coordination (Duane)
      • GoaT: Monica has not had time to follow up with Cibele on this - she (or someone) will need to find time, as this is important.
  • Working group additional items (example: AGS organization discussion from the Outreach WG)
  • Announcement from VeuPathDB
    • NIH has discontinued funding for the current group
    • Still unknown who the new providers are. They will likely not provide the same level of service.
    • September 14th is the end date for the current VectorBase site.
    • With respect to vector genomics community building:
      • There is a large vector genomics community - could we add them to i5k?
      • Ask Mary Ann about what organizations to reach out to.
  • Featured discussion: Highlights from AGS 2024 (Nairobi Kenya): Monica
    • Outcomes from the i5k discussion session with AGS attendees, and possible future directions
    • Outcomes from a discussion with Anne Muigai from the African BioGenome Project (https://africanbiogenome.org), and possibly future collaborations facilitated by i5k
    • Slides: AGS2024-i5k recap.pptx
    • Next steps:
      • Inform Outreach and Training WGs about suggestions
        • Facilitating more targeted outreach; collaborative insect genomics work
        • Consider international training needs (cf. new training portal that ERGA is building)
        • Fund someone locally to do local training and local community building
      • Talk to Outreach WG about organizing an i5k - ABP meeting
        • Think about foundational grant support for international collaborations
        • Reach out to Alexie about broadening i5k internationally
  • Other items from the community germane to the cc (e.g. relevant EBP updates, new funding opportunities, meetings/conferences)
  • BPRI renewal is coming up. Sheina is taking over from Anna in terms of ARS involvement in this resource.
  • EBP updates:
    • Communications:
      • New communications director (Maja Peirce) who has helped improve their social media stats etc
      • Website has new feature with species of the month or publication of the month - we can provide suggestions for any of these
    • Committee reports:
      • Discussion of implementing a data release policy for VGP that may also be adopted by EBP - max 1 year ‘embargo’ either after genome is released or annotations are generated
        • Erga’s system sounds similar to what i5k may want to implement, if we make recommendations or expand our scope. ERGA Open Data Policy (v0.0.5 - 2023.11.21) https://zenodo.org/records/10785625
        • There may be a poll coming up on whether this would work for member organizations
    • Biodiversity Genomics Europe report by Camila Mazzoni (part of ERGA; facilitates strategic planning, collaboration, and production of high quality genomic data within ERGA)
      • ERGA knowledge hub - provides educational materials on genomics and related fields; reduce barriers to knowledge exchange. Curated material. https://knowledge.erga-biodiversity.eu/
        • Should our training working group reach out to them?
  • Link to next month’s agenda: Email Marc (mshalfon@buffalo.edu)

NEXT MEETING: 21 August 2024

11:00-12:00 EDT