Championing diversity and collaboration at the 2024 Galaxy Community Conference

In June 2024, members of the ELIXIR-UK community, including key contributors like Wendi Bacon and Nicola Soranzo, participated in the 2024 Galaxy Community Conference (GCC2024), the flagship annual event about the use and development of the Galaxy platform for data-intensive biomedical research. Their active involvement in various initiatives helped strengthen community engagement, promote diversity and advance research within the Galaxy ecosystem.

The conference featured a wide array of activities aimed at enhancing collaboration and participation across the Galaxy community. ELIXIR-UK representatives were at the forefront of these efforts.

Wendi Bacon was invited to participate in the conference’s inaugural panel discussion. She also led the Community Lightning Talks, highlighting the importance of community-driven initiatives.

As chair of the Galaxy Community Board, she also contributed to the ‘State of the Galaxy’ talk, guiding discussions on the community’s achievements and future directions.

Her role didn’t stop there. Wendi also initiated the “VENUS” lunch, the first event specifically for women and nonbinary members of the Galaxy community. 

Her impact on diversity topics was also felt during the Galaxy Directions Summit, where she led discussions on governance to broaden representation and ensure that diverse perspectives are reflected in the governance of the Galaxy project.

Training and education were central themes at the conference, with ELIXIR-UK members actively supporting the Galaxy single-cell training session. This session helped recruit new members to the Galaxy Single Cell & Spatial Omics Community of Practice (SPOC), strengthening the community’s expertise in this critical area of research.

Such interactions laid the groundwork for a future Single Cell OSCARS submission.

Meanwhile, Nicola Soranzo co-organised and chaired the ELIXIR Galaxy Community F2F meeting, the yearly hybrid meeting of the Galaxy Community in ELIXIR, which was co-located with GCC2024 in Brno. Here, he also presented a talk about the “ELIXIR Science Tiers Open Call for Commissioned Services”.

Nicola contributed his expertise during the lively community discussions at the conference BoFs “Small scale Galaxy Admins Community of Practice”, “The future of Galaxy in EOSC”, and “Galaxy’s release process”.

The ELIXIR-UK community also contributed to the Galaxy CoFest, with Wendi Bacon leading a project to unify the single-cell subdomain across different continents. This initiative is nearing completion and will result in a unified subdomain site for single-cell analysis that operates seamlessly across multiple Galaxy servers. Nicola also led a hacking project to add Python 3.13 and NumPy 2.0 support to the main Galaxy codebase.

Reflecting on the conference, the ELIXIR-UK community highlighted the collaborative spirit and the opportunity to see the impact of their work. A standout moment was the opportunity for Wendi Bacon to meet her virtual interns in person for the first time. These students presented their work, participated in networking events, and contributed to training sessions at the CoFest, showcasing the next generation of bioinformatics talent within the Galaxy community. Some of these interns, such as Morgan Howells and Julia Jakiela, have also been key collaborators of the ELIXIR-UK Data Stewardship Fellowship.

The Node’s involvement in the Galaxy Conference demonstrated the ELIXIR-UK community’s commitment to fostering collaboration, promoting diversity, and advancing the Galaxy platform.