The Freiburg Galaxy Team took several opportunities to present Galaxy as a FAIR data analysis and workflow management system, computing platform, training infrastructure and research data management system at various conferences and meetings. In the past couple of years, our team also significantly contributed to the development of some key Galaxy features, tools and tutorials. We also participated in several hackathons and held training events, training thousands of trainees . The complete list of events and details can be accessed from the “Events” and “News” sections at Europe subsite. Some notable achievements are listed in this post.

Conferences and Meetings

ELIXIR All Hands Meeting, June 2024, Uppsala, Sweden

The team participated in several plenary sessions, mini symposia, ELIXIR networking activities and delivered workshops on single-cell data interoperability, Galaxy RDM, GTN, workflows and best practices. Please read our detailed post of this event here.

Galaxy Community Conference (GCC), June 2024, Brno, Czech Republic

Co-organized by the Freiburg Galaxy team, the GCC2024 brought together 151 participants from 28 countries for a week-long event focused on everything around Galaxy. Keynotes included talks on exposomics integration, role of Galaxy in EOSC Federation building, and genetic research using Galaxy. The conference featured 54 talks, 55 posters, and 14 "Birds of a Feather" (BOF) sessions, alongside diverse training programs covering topics like Galaxy development and advanced scientific workflows. The Collaboration Fest (CoFest) encouraged collaborative development, with projects addressing workflow integration, training resources, and Galaxy feature enhancements. Our team actively participated in poster sessions, BOFs and delivered talks and workshops covering workflow development, front-end and back-end features, and highlighting developments from single-cell and microbiome communities.

Hosting R/Shiny applications on Galaxy, February 2024, Freiburg, Germany

Free computation resources for usage of R/Shiny applications for a large user base are generally scarce. Making these apps available on various large-scale compute platforms reduces the burden on platforms like shinyapps.io where Shiny web apps are hosted. Some representatives of the Bioconductor community and the Galaxy Freiburg team together discussed the possibilities of simplifying Shiny apps deployment on Galaxy. During the hackathon, we generated a proof of concept for dockerization and deployment of Shiny apps as Galaxy interactive tools which eventually took off later this year.

Ask Us Anything about Galaxy live webinar, July 2024, online

To address the challenge of providing direct interaction with users despite a rapidly growing user base, our team initiated regular online meetings for Galaxy users to ask questions and receive support. The first session, held in July, attracted over 30 participants from multiple continents. Discussions during the Q\&A covered topics such as analysis-specific tools and workflows, user disk quotas, user interface, and training materials, fostering engagement and addressing diverse user needs.

Freiburg Galaxy team at GCB 2024, September 2024, Bielefeld, Germany

German Conference of Bioinformatics gathers hundreds of experts from bioinformatics and computational biology to explore recent advancements in bioinformatics and related fields. The Freiburg Galaxy team participated in conference sessions, hands-on workshops and poster sessions. Our team presented microGalaxy Special Interest Group (SIG) and ERGA-Galaxy collaborative efforts to establish community-driven standards for reference genome generation.

Freiburg Galaxy team at the EGI 2024, October 2024, Lecce, Italy

Our team presented the EuroScienceGateway (ESG) project and Galaxy’s role in providing structured access to compute infrastructure, tools and workflows to enable FAIR research output. Our ESG exhibition booth and a talk highlighted the architecture of the European Galaxy instance, including job scheduling and visualization, and distributed computing using PULSAR and Advanced Resource Connector (ARC).

Updates from scverse conference, September 2024, Munich, Germany

The Freiburg Galaxy team had an opportunity to present the updates from the Galaxy Single-cell and Spatial Omics Community at the first scverse conference held at the Technical University of Munich. Participants expressed significant interest in the simplicity of building workflows on Galaxy and were particularly impressed by the extensive collection of e-learning tutorials provided by the Galaxy single-cell community.

Trainings and Workshops

de.NBI / RTG2355 Galaxy Training Course - RNAseq Analysis

In a joint training event of de.NBI and RTG2355 about RNAseq Analysis, the Galaxy Freiburg team in collaboration with scientists from the Giessen university have demonstrated and work together on detailed E-learning step-by-step-instructions of RNA-Seq Analysis using the Galaxy Training Network (GTN) on the usegalaxy.eu.

de.NBI: Galaxy Microbial Genomics Course - 2024

This course provided an overview of the field of genomics and how to use the Galaxy platform for genome analysis, with the main focus on the assembly and annotation of bacterial genomes. The course consisted of lectures and hands-on sessions, where trainee had the opportunity to practice using Galaxy and the bioinformatics tools on real-world datasets. The course was designed for PhD students, postdoctoral fellows or other scientists who have a solid background in bioinformatics and molecular biology and want to learn more about genomics and Galaxy.

Galaxy Training Academy 2024

The Galaxy Training Academy 2024 trained researchers in Galaxy data analysis world wide across a variety of scientific topics. From October 7th to 11th, the Galaxy Training Network (GTN) hosted a global online Galaxy training course. This asynchronous, self-paced learning event was similar to last year’s GTN Smörgåsbord events, which have been successfully running since 2021.

These events federate trainers and trainees all over the globe. The trainings available are a mix of pre-recorded lectures and written guides, and the participants can follow the training paths at their own pace while benefitting from support from the trainers on Slack. The full program and detailed event setup instrauction were provided to participants in advance. With over 2,829 registered participants, the GTA provided training to a wide range of learners from around the world. In total, 80 people contributed to the event, working on 53 updated tutorials, producing 27 new recorded videos from 24 speakers, and providing extensive support throughout the event.

The Galaxy Training Academy 2024 exemplified Galaxy’s commitment to accessibility and community-driven education. Through the GTN, we were able to deliver a flexible, engaging learning experience that allowed hundreds of participants to advance their data analysis skills, regardless of their prior knowledge.

BioHackathon Europe, November 2024, Barcelona

Building on the successful outcomes of 2023 Biohackathon, the Galaxy team continued developing imaging data workflows and expanded tool FAIRification to the Galaxy Single-Cell community via Galaxy CoDex which aims to enhance the discoverability of Galaxy tools, workflows and tutorials. The team also participated in projects focused on reducing Galaxy's environmental impact and enabling secure data exchange between Galaxy and the European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA), among other impactful contributions.

Gallantries & ELIXIR-GOBLET Train the Trainers

In collaboration with ELIXIR-GOBLET’s Train the Trainers program, Gallantries hosted a course to teach training principles, including session planning, material design, assessment, and feedback, to empower new trainers.

ELIXIR and BioNT Workshops

Supported by ELIXIR (e.g. via the knowledge exchange initiative), the Freiburg Galaxy team delivered within the BioNT consortium, Galaxy HTS data analysis workshops in 2023 and 2024. Additionally, a beginner-level Python workshop aimed at new programming enthusiasts was held in 2023 and 2024.

An ELIXIR Staff Exchange to expand the single cell tools on Galaxy

Marisa Loach took the opportunity from the ELIXIR Staff Exchange Programme and worked with the Galaxy Freiburg team for six months. During this project, she wrapped multiple tools to the Galaxy and prepared tutorials for the Galaxy Training Network (GTN).

Galaxy Major Server and Feature Updates

Bring your own storage

Now it is possible to connect the Galaxy instances to external public or commercial storage service providers.

Science Communication

As drivers of the Galaxy project, we have responsibility for good scientific communication. This includes not supporting hostile environments. As such we have decided to leave Twitter/X, effective March 31st, 2024. You can find Galaxy on BlueSky, Mastodon, and LinkedIn, and of course, you can stay up to date by visiting the Galaxy Hub. Additionally, we encourage you to stay connected with the Galaxy Training Network, which is active on BlueSky and Mastodon.