General information

This workshop is designed to investigate the emerging scientific interface between genomic and environmental research. It will examine if and how projects and facilities funded by the NERC might take a lead in enabling researchers to ask new questions that depend upon the availability and efficient integration of genomic and environmental data. This workshop will aim to bring together several relevant parties within NERC for a session of talks and open discussion. Participants would ideally include:

• scientists tackling ecological, environmental and evolutionary questions, including those working within large-scale consortium projects
• scientists, bioinformaticians, and data managers of NERC programmes working directly with these types of data and questions
• members of other NERC data centres and NERC data managers
• representative of facilities providing molecular and genomic services to the NERC community
• other scientists working in this area

There are many new initiatives represented by this list of potential participants. This community needs to work together closely to promote data sharing and interdisciplinary activities if we hope to enable NERC and NERC allied researchers to harness the full potential of the data and facilities we have. This workshop will provide a forum for many of these people to meet face-to-face for the first time thus facilitating initial interactions and encouraging future communication and co-operation. The proposed agenda includes a series of ‘lightening’ talks where a number of individuals will give a brief overview of the activities and developments within their area. This will familiarize the group with the wide range of activities ongoing in NERC. There will also be a few longer talks concentrating on current research activities. These talks will help define in more detail some of the challenges and opportunities ahead. There will also be extended periods dedicated to open discussion. This time would be used for us to further articulate our needs as a community, identify bottlenecks to scientific advancement in this area, debate ways to overcome them, and establish how we might work together better. The final session of the workshop will be dedicated to developing a roadmap that will help us to achieve both our practical goals of further harmonization within NERC (especially within the area of meta-data capture) and our longer-term goals of developing appropriate and user-friendly solutions in this rapidly growing area of science.

This workshop is being organised by Dawn Fields of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Oxford, and Bela Tiwari of the Environmental Genomics Data Centre.

Aim of the workshop

The aims of this workshop are to:

1. define more clearly the science questions that are driving the need for access to genomic and environmental data in NERC and in the wider community;
2. develop a list questions that could be addressed if we had better access to interdisciplinary data;
3. discuss how we should best store such interdisciplinary data in the future to maximize potential for use and ensure accessibility;
4. review current ways that NERC research data is made available to the wider community and further explore the scientific possibilities associated with this data;
5. determine how projects like the PG&P Marine Metagenomics Consortium can seamlessly access and exploit genomic and oceanographic data;
6. identify new linkages and potential partnerships between groups that might lead to future grant applications / projects / publications
7. develop a better awareness of how e-science technologies and concepts might provide solutions for data exchange, storage, accessibility, dissemination, and analysis;
8. develop a specific understanding of how the NERC Data GRID could help us achieve the above goals;
9. explore the idea of a “Virtual NERC community” (AccessGrid nodes etc).

Programme

Location

The workshop will take place in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge. Details of the location, including travel plans, can be obtained here.

Overnight accommodation will be provided in Churchill College Cambridge (accommodation and breakfast). The workshop dinner on the evening of 5th September will also be held in Churchill College.

	Centre for Mathematical Sciences, main entrance.
	Churchill College from the junction with the main road. The entrance is on the right hand side of this photograph.

Registration

There is no registration charge for this workshop. Accommodation in Churchill College and meals (including the conference dinner) for UK academic participants will be provided with no charge. Registration is essential and must be done using our on-line form. This should be done using our on-line form. The NIEeS will refund reasonable travel expenses. In the event of any difficulty in booking, including not receiving an email confirmation within 24 hours, please email the NIEeS office.

Contact and further information

For information about registration, and all other types of queries, please contact the NIEeS office in the first instance.