December 2017 National eResearch Newsletter

Please note that this is the last newsletter for 2017.  At this stage, it is planned to issue one in January 2018, but that may not prove possible – please keep your eyes open for a Call for Articles in early January 2018 (or early February if the January issue proves not to be viable).

Some of the contributors to this Newsletter will know that the editor is VERY strict about imposing the 100-word limit.  As a Christmas present to you contributors, I have relaxed the rule (A VERY LITTLE) in this issue.  Enjoy !

The University of Western Australia, Murdoch University, Curtin University, and Edith Cowan University in conjunction with Advancing Western Australian Education, the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, and the Forrest Research Foundation are proud to present the 2018 Research Bazaar.  The aim of the event is to equip researchers from all career stages and disciplines with the digital skills and tools required to do their research better, faster and smarter.

UWA is hosting the 2018 Research Bazaar to be held from 23rd- 25th January at the Business School.  Registrations are now open, and more information is available at https://resbaz.github.io/resbaz2018/perth/.

Nectar Virtual Laboratories (VLs), which provide digital interfaces, tools and data to online research communities, are generating a return on investment of up to 138 times their cost, according to a new report by Victoria University academics.

Read more at: https://nectar.org.au/vls-have-huge-economic-research-impact/.

New dates for the postponed Sky Mining hackathon have been announced.  It’s happening in Perth on 16-18 February 2018!

This event is a unique opportunity to explore astronomy data and solve problems directly from astronomers across Australia.  Teams will also have the opportunity to win a grand prize of $2,000 provided they successfully come up with the best solution to one of the challenges.

This event is free and food and refreshments will be provided throughout the weekend.

To be a part of this exciting event, please register at: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/hackastron-sky-mining-2018-tickets-37934847149

For more information and to see the challenges, see: https://adacs.org.au/index.php/sky-mining-hackathon/.

Allocation outcomes for applicants to the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme at NCI, Pawsey, MASSIVE and Flashlite are now available to view online.  Please go to https://ncmas.nci.org.au/2018/outcomes to view the results.

Three award-winning Australian computer science researchers are the invited speakers for Australasian Computer Science Week 2018 (ACSW 2018).

Associate Professor Lexing Xie (pictured), winner of the 2018 CORE Chris Wallace Award for Outstanding Research;  Dr Antonette Mendoza, winner of the 2018 CORE Teaching Award;  and Dr Junhao Gan, winner of the 2018 CORE John Makepeace Bennett Award for an Australasian Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation, will all speak at ACSW 2018.

The University of Queensland’s Research Computing Centre will host ACSW 2018 on UQ’s St Lucia campus from 30 January to 2 February.  Read more:  https://rcc.uq.edu.au/article/2017/12/award-winning-researchers-speak-acsw-2018.

Hosted by the EMBL-ABR:  UNSW Node, the second All-Hands meeting was a terrific opportunity to meet with colleagues across the community and other Nodes to help define the future for this active and growing Resource.  We were particularly pleased to welcome Dr Niklas Blomberg, Director, ELIXIR, EU, whose attendance was supported by Bioplatforms Australia.  Australian eResearch expert Rhys Francis’ presentation invited the group to focus on the needs of professional bioinformaticians, but more importantly on the ever-growing need for skills and resources bearing down on us from the wider life science community.

All presentations are available here:  https://www.embl-abr.org.au/all-hands-2017/.

HuNI: the NeCTAR Virtual Laboratory for the Humanities has a new iteration that enables researchers to take advantage of graph searching capabilities.  With HuNI’s implementation of Neo4j graph database software, users now have powerful new ways of exploring the network of relationships between more than 17 million records.  Once you’ve found a node of interest, you can also find all nodes connected to it – and the number of links between them.  You can also find the shortest path between two distant nodes.  The new graph functionality is a major enhancement of HuNI’s ability to support humanities research.

Contact: Professor Deb Verhoeven, University of Technology Sydney, Deb.Verhoeven@uts.edu.au.

For the first time in a decade, the International Internet Preservation Consortium’s annual web archiving conference will come to Australasia, providing a rare opportunity for web curators, librarians, archivists, historians, humanists, researchers, developers, computer scientists and others interested in the preservation of world’s web heritage to come together at this international forum in the southern hemisphere.  Proposals on all aspects of web archiving practice as well as researching and using web archives are invited.

See the CFP for more details: http://netpreserve.org/ga2018/call-for-papers/.

The Australian National Data Service (ANDS) has published its latest quarterly newsletter magazine, Share.

The theme of the edition is ‘A world leading data advantage’, which looks at a range of Australian research data projects that have made an impact across various domains.

Share is available to read online or download (PDF) at http://www.ands.org.au/news-and-events/share-newsletter/share-30.

ANDS, Nectar and RDS have merged Twitter accounts with immediate effect.  Please follow

@ands_nectar_rds to keep up with events and news.

More information at:

http://www.ands.org.au/news-and-events/latest-news/news/ands,-nectar-and-rds-to-publish-joint-e-newsletter-and-twitter-feed.

The Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory (BCCVL) is a finalist in the iTNews Benchmark Awards for 2018.  These Awards recognise technology leadership in the Australian business community and within government.  Nominated in the Education category, the BCCVL is recognised for its application in research facilities and tertiary education.  Finalists in each category will be chosen by judging panels comprising iTNews’ award-winning editorial team and expert advisors.  Winners in each category will be announced at the CIO Edge summit held at Melbourne’s Grand Hyatt on 20 February 2018.  The winners will be crowned surrounded by over 100 peer CIOs.  More information: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/how-griffith-unis-virtual-lab-is-changing-climate-change-research-478796.

The latest newsletter from Federation University Australia’s Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI) is now available.  The Spring issue contains news items showcasing the diverse eResearch activities being undertaken in the Centre, including:

• Discover the Living Moorabool
• Visualising Ballarat
• Online Farm Trials: Data audit
• Sport and Recreation Spatial receives national award

The newsletter is available on the CeRDI website at:  www.cerdi.edu.au/cb_pages/news/CeRDINewsletterSpring2017.php.

To subscribe to the CeRDI newsletter mailing list visit:

http://www.cerdi.edu.au/cb_pages/newsletter_subscription.php.

The task of eradicating birth defects is progressing in big ways thanks to advancements in genetic sequencing and bioinformatics.  Professor Sally Dunwoodie from the Victor Change Cardiac Research Institute uses NCI to analyse genomes in her ground-breaking research.

Click here to read more:  https://nci.org.au/research/untangling-mystery-birth-defects/.

QCIF and other EMBL Australia Bioinformatics Resource (EMBL-ABR) nodes successfully tested a new training model allowing an international trainer to remotely deliver a workshop across Australia last month.

On Tuesday, 21 November, Dr Monica Munoz-Torres from Phoenix Bioinformatics in California instructed more than 80 workshop attendees in nine locations across Australia in how to use online tool Apollo for genome annotation.

Read more:  https://www.qcif.edu.au/index.php/news/375-apollo-workshop-launches-new-training-model.

An advanced data visualisation system that allows researchers to analyse large volumes of microscopy data as a 3D interactive movie began operating at UQ this month.

UQ Research Computing Centre visualisation expert Oliver Cairncross developed the tool, named Phoebe, to help researchers manage large amounts of data generated by UQ’s new world-class Lattice Light Sheet Microscope, which was installed at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience in September this year.

Read more:  https://rcc.uq.edu.au/article/2017/12/data-visualisation-tool-phoebe-begins-work-uq.