BioinfoCoreLeaders Club consolidated after Warwick meeting

BioinfoCoreLeaders Club, a national community for people leading and managing bioinformatics and computational biology core facilities, was formally established as an ELIXIR-UK-endorsed community following their launch at a University of Liverpool-led event last May. The community has now inaugurated the Club at their second meeting at the University of Warwick on 10-11 September 2026, where members agreed specific working groups, meeting schedules and the community’s first collective outputs.

34 people attended, including 30 service bioinformaticians and 4 representatives of industry sponsors. The community brings together heads, directors, managers and principal digital Research Technical Professionals from UK universities and not-for-profit research institutes. It grew out of an informal network and held its inaugural meeting at the University of Liverpool in May, attended by representatives of 17 organisations. 

The Warwick meeting established working groups with agreed meeting schedules and set out the first pieces of collective work: a standard operating procedure for handling user queries involving generative AI, a document making the national case for local bioinformatics service units, shared approaches to improving access to interactive computing sessions across institutions, and a route to engage the UK research computing community. Three online community meetings are scheduled and planning has begun for an annual meeting.

The community is open to all, and as such its mission is also to support aspiring leaders in this space. The programme was carefully designed to also include a research technical professional career promotion pathway led by representatives of the three beacon institutions for this: University of Liverpool, University of Warwick and University Collegue London; as well as a mentoring session  for peers and more junior staff, funded through a grant from DisCouRSE.

The community is now ELIXIR-UK-endorsed, giving core facility leaders a route to contribute evidence to national discussions on research infrastructure, workforce sustainability and the responsible use of AI.

“When first meeting, many primarily felt about it as meeting with their competitors and now this has changed to an overarching feeling of meeting friends and partners who help each other – a big and useful transition in mood across the country.”

Said Prof Sascha Ott, co-lead of the new Club.

Membership is open and free. To find out more, visit the BioinfoCoreLeaders Club.

The meeting was funded through the ELIXIR-UK Flexible Bursaries Scheme activity BioinfoCore Connect UK, with support from 10x Genomics, Inflexa and Kidney Research UK, and a grant from DisCouRSE enabling junior staff to attend. ELIXIR-UK is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.