GVL creates connections across the Tasman

Last month the GVL was trialled by colleagues in New Zealand (NZ) who were interested in its use for both research and training in bioinformatics. Aleksandra Pawlik, Research Community Manager, New Zealand eScience Infrastructure, wrote afterwards:

We’re ending the first of the scheduled training workshops and indeed it was a great idea. GVL removes all the headache of setting things up but is also an infrastructure that (hopefully) will become available and prevalent among many researchers. I am saying that as from my experience in teaching computational skills to researchers, I know that it is essential to teach people tools that they can carry on using. Therefore usually Virtual Machines or ad-hoc cloud set ups are not ideal. They are available at the workshop but then researchers have to use whatever their organisations offer them.

This opportunity arose from an information exchange our Nectar colleagues were having with their NZ counterparts who are responsible for meeting the infrastructure needs of the New Zealand Government’s new national genomics initiative (Genomics Aotearoa, NZ$35M over 7 years). It is being hosted by the University of Otago, and involves a number of NZ universities and Crown Research Institutes. Genomics Aotearoa aims to put in place key genomics and bioinformatics infrastructure to underpin research exemplars across three themes: Health, Environment and Primary Production. An important component of this work involves the provision of a national genomics computing platform and for that they were keen to assess the GVL environment for genomics training and analysis activities.

Thanks to all involved in making this trial a success,

Assoc Prof Michael Black, Department of Biochemistry, University of Otago
Dr Michelle Barker, Deputy Director, Research Software Infrastructure, Nectar
Prof Glenn Moloney, Director, Nectar
Dr Paul Coddington, Deputy Director, Research Platforms, Nectar
Dr Aleksandra Pawlik, Research Community Manager, New Zealand eScience Infrastructure
Assoc Prof Andrew Lonie, Director, Melbourne Bioinformatics & EMBL-ABR
Mr Simon Gladman, GVL Lead, Melbourne Bioinformatics
Mr Nick Jones, Director, eScience NZ Infrastructure
Dr Elizabeth Permina, Bioinformatician, Otago Genomics and Bioinformatics Facility, Health Sciences, University of Otago
Prof Peter Dearden, Director, Director, Genetics Otago
Prof Cris Print, School of Medical Sciences, University of Auckland and co-lead bioinformatics, Genetics Otago.

We look forward to greater collaboration in the development of shared training resources for both our communities.