ELIXIR-UK members selected for the BioFAIR Fellowship

Members of the ELIXIR-UK community have been selected for the inaugural BioFAIR  Fellowship programme to support the national adoption and advocacy of FAIR practices across UK life sciences. The programme brings together those working to strengthen reproducibility, interoperability and the reuse of data.

The Fellowship provides training, mentoring and networking opportunities to equip participants with the skills and resources to champion FAIR principles within their organisations and communities. It aims to build long-term capability and drive culture change in how research outputs are managed and shared.

Out of the ten selected fellows for this inaugural cohort, eight belong to ELIXIR-UK organisations and five of them are active members of our community.  Their planned contributions include supporting workflow adoption, strengthening institutional FAIR practice and developing approaches that help researchers embed reproducible methods in day-to-day work.

Their participation reflects the strength of the ELIXIR-UK community in advancing FAIR data and workflow capability across the UK, and its ongoing contribution to national efforts to improve FAIR data in practice.

We also hope to strengthen our links with other Fellows who are based at ELIXIR-UK member organisations (Nan Fletcher-Lloyd  at Imperial College London, Jean-Marie Burel at University of Dundee, Chris Wyatt at UCL), and are keen on developing new relationships with others at Wellcome Sanger Institute (Priyanka Surana) and Queen University Belfast (Evan Troendle).

Craig Willis, University of Exeter

Craig will embed FAIR-aligned data and workflow practices at the heart of the UK’s functional genomics community by driving people-focused activities across the UK Human Functional Genomics Initiative, a national network of > 1,000 academics, clinicians and industry partners. He will work to surface the network’s understanding on FAIR data and workflow practices, and coordinate training and knowledge-exchange activities tailored to the needs of the network.

Marisa Loach, The Open University 

Marisa will focus on reusing workflows for single-cell analysis by developing FAIR workflows and training materials for the Galaxy platform. She will also deliver training for early-career researchers at institutions with limited bioinformatics resources, encouraging workflow reuse by those who can benefit most. Marisa is an active contributor to both the Galaxy Community and the ELIXIR Single-Cell Community.

Nicola Soranzo, Earlham Institute

Nicola, Technical Coordinator for ELIXIR-UK, will strengthen national capability in FAIR and reusable workflows by establishing a Galaxy Special Interest Group for the UK, gathering national requirements for Galaxy services and training, and providing training and guidance to help researchers publish FAIR workflows via the Intergalactic Workflow Commission (IWC) and WorkflowHub. He will share all materials openly, ensuring that the needs of the UK are fed into the BioFAIR Methods Commons and broader global Galaxy developments.

Robert Andrews, Cardiff University

Robert is one of the leads of the RDM Club and co-led the ELIXIR-UK Data Stewardship, offering him a unique perspective from a similar initiative. His Fellowship will enable researchers to run and adapt reproducible RNA-seq workflows using nf-core on Supercomputing Wales and Isambard 3. This includes delivering online training, hosting follow-up data clinics, supporting bespoke workflow development in Nextflow, and working with other Fellows to produce shared community resources such as workflow FAIRification checklists, success stories and training materials.

Sam Haynes, Quadram Institute 

Sam will facilitate knowledge exchange across UK core facilities by bringing together technicians and facility managers working in sequencing, microscopy, bioinformatics, proteomics and other technical areas. He will identify obstacles to publishing FAIR data and FAIR workflows, share solutions, and highlight issues requiring broader attention. Sam welcomes contact from core facility staff interested in strengthening FAIR practice (sam.haynes@biofair.uk).