SIB Members are leading or involved in several projects which have been awarded funding from swissuniversities after a call to foster open research data (ORD). From multi-omics data integration to a curriculum for data stewards, they will contribute to paving the way for the national ORD strategy in the field of life science. Building on synergies between several Swiss institutions, they are also aligned with the proposal of a national infrastructure to foster the sharing and reuse of life science research data, the SwissBioData ecosystem.
A shared vision for open research data in Switzerland
To support the National Strategy and Action Plan for ORD, swissuniversities launched a 2022 call for projects. “Having these projects, led by or involving SIB Members, selected for funding is a fantastic achievement. The breadth of topics they cover, from omics and structural data to training and botanical collections, highlights the urgent transversal need for making data sharable and reusable in life sciences,” says Christophe Dessimoz, Executive Director of SIB. Furthermore, each project is fully aligned with the principles laid out by the SwissBioData ecosystem (SBDe) proposal, thus firmly supporting FAIR data sharing in the life sciences. This adds further promise to the initiative, which already recently gained traction, and demonstrates a shared vision for ORD in Switzerland.
Grant awarded projects (more information on individual projects will follow soon):
The projects were submitted to the call “Open Science I Phase B – ORD programme” (in German), which seeks to provide bottom-up support to promote excellence in ORD practices as well as to define, establish and promote the roles of experts in ORD such as data stewards and data scientists. Group Leaders and members from the institute are either leading or contributing to those projects, which combine complementary expertise and span several Swiss institutions:
- Knowledge management in the Digital Botanical gardens initiative
SIB involvement: Ana Claudia Sima and Tarcisio Mendes de Farias, University of Lausanne
Other institutions involved: University of Fribourg (leading house), University of Neuchatel, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) - ModelArchive: Open research data best practices for computational macromolecular models
SIB Group Leaders involved: Torsten Schwede and Markus Lill, University of Basel (leading house), Andrea Cavalli, Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Vincent Zoete and Olivier Michielin, University of Lausanne and Matteo Dal Peraro, EPFL.
Other institutions involved: Rutgers University (USA), The European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) (UK), University of California San Francisco (USA), University of Maryland (USA) - OMNIBENCHMARK: Fostering open continuous method assessments
SIB Group Leader involved: Mark D. Robinson, University of Zurich - scFAIR: Standardization and stewardship of single-cell metadata
SIB Group Leaders involved: Marc Robinson-Rechavi and Frédéric Bastian, University of Lausanne (leading house), Bart Deplancke, EPFL - Standardized integration of multi-omics biomedical data
SIB Group Leaders involved: Mihaela Zavolan and Erik von Nimwegen, University of Basel (leading house).
Other institution involved: EPFL - Swiss Data Stewardship Environment: Profile training and network, to develop a national certification course (CAS) in data stewardship
SIB involvement: Patricia Palagi, Head of Training
Other institutions involved: University of Lausanne (leading house), Haute Ecole Pedagogique Vaud (HEP Vaud), University of Geneva, Geneva School of Business Administration (HEG Geneva), Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS), University of Zurich, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)
