AGENDA

i5K Coordinating Group

18 October 2023

11:00-12:00 EST

Meeting Chair: Monica Poelchau

Attending: Monica Poelchau, Brad Coates, Glenn Hanes, Duane McKenna, Sue Brown, Anna Childers, Chris Childers, Josh Benoit

Regrets: Marc Halfon,

  • Approval of previous meeting’s minutes.
  • New member introductions
  • CC member cameo of the month: Brad Coates (USDA-ARS, Corn Insects & Crop Genetics Research Unit)
  • Working group highlights (can change order)
    • Community building and outreach Met Oct 17.
      • International Congress Entomology 2024. Symposium submission in consideration: “International sequencing initiatives: Building genomic resources and bridging research disciplines” Brad Coates & Fei Li. Accepted!6 of 8 speaker slots filled.
      • Arthropod Genomics Symposium X (AGSx)
        • TODO: Glenn converted and edited recordings (Thanks!). Anna: Please upload videos from AGSx 2023 to https://www.youtube.com/c/i5k_community; following upload, send/post notices to ListServ, Slack, and Twitter (X).
        • AGSx 2024 Sessions Jan-May 2024
        • Discussion of technical aspects of breakout rooms
      • AGS 2024, June 25-27 in Nairobi Kenya: Register interest at https://bit.ly/ags2024 Co-organizers Mary Ann McDowell <mmcdowe1@nd.edu>; Samuel Rund <srund@nd.edu> attending. WIll use social media resources to advertise. i5K Twitter, ListServ and Slack.
    • Standards - We started drafting an agenda for our gap analysis meeting on October 30th. Let us know if you are interested in attending!
    • Exec committee - no meeting this month.
    • Training. Continuing with generating video content. 10/24 11:30 central time is their next meeting - can Anna attend?
    • Genome Project Coordination - no meetings in the past month.
  • Working group additional items (example: AGS organization discussion from the Outreach WG)
  • Other items from the community germane to the cc (e.g. relevant EBP updates, new funding opportunities, meetings/conferences)

The EBP group met on October 6th. Monica is now substituting for Kevin as the i5k rep.

  • The meeting was essentially a progress report on EBP for the past year - genomes sequenced per taxonomic grouping; funding increases; publications in high profile journals; genome notes.
  • Reminder for this group that i5k metrics are reported to EBP (even though i5k is not the best fit for this group).

  • Nicole had a report on EBP communications metrics - if we have good items to share that are worth re-sharing with the EBP on social media, we can send them to Nicole (perhaps when we are ready to announce i5k 2.0?). Rob mentioned that training might be a good thing for EBP to repost, as well. She’s done ‘fun fact fridays’ and ‘in the field with EBP’ - I imagine she’d be open to contributions from i5k if we have anything. Reminder about article about the EBP that came out in the New Yorker in August.

  • EBP scientific committees. Committees are wrapping up phase 1
  • sample collection and processing - finishing up V1.0 guidelines; are planning guidance on protocols.io
  • sequencing and assembly - finishing up recommendations document, updating standards document
  • annotation - finalizing annotation standards including metadata, supporting evidence
  • analysis - alignment is a priority, in particular aligning thousands + genomes
  • IT and informatics - data service portal design; keeping IT and informatics standards docs updated every six months
  • ELSI - finished giving advice on governance document; finalized EBP position on digital sequence information; finishing policy statement on intellectual property; working on a policy statement on data sharing; provide advice to US individuals on US government sanctions on BGI; increased committee composition (geographically). Discussion of species of dual use research concern is on the to-do list.
  • EBP JEDI committee: organized many workshops and presentations in 2023. Sessions at PAG2024 in the works; white paper in the works; recruiting new members.
  • Nominations committee - ensuring geographic diversity in committees; formed governance committee.
  • Governance committee - just started, chaired by Rob. Purpose is to codify how processes should happen in EBP; improve current governance document based on feedback
  • Secretariat - EBP secretariat at UC Davis will be dissolved November 2023. Bids for a new secretariat will open in October, due October 31st. 3-year arrangement within new host institution. Office will entail Executive Director; Project coordinator; Consumer coordinator; Outreach coordinator.

  • Plans for 2023-2024: Selection of secretariat; Selection of regional nodes; Frontiers publication phase II; 2024 conference

  • Link to next month’s agenda: Email Marc (mshalfon@buffalo.edu) or add directly using this link:

NEXT MEETING: 15 November 2023

11:00-12:00 EDT