SIB Days 2020: Facing the COVID-19 crisis as bioinformaticians - four perspectives
Channel: SIB - Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
Date: 2020-07-01

The COVID-19 pandemic will leave profound marks on society. Many SIB members played a significant role in fighting against the disease by developing or maintaining key resources that were necessary for the scientific community: Nextstrain, ViralZone, and many more.

In this panel discussion, we are talking with some of them and looking back at what went on behind the scenes over the past months. What were the immediate effects of the COVID-19 crisis on their work and teams? What were the main challenges to overcome? Which lessons were learned for the future, and how do they envision the evolution of their resources in the next few months? 

Speakers are: 
Emma Hodcroft, Postdoctoral researcher at the Biozentrum, University of Basel (Nextstrain) 
Philippe Le Mercier, Project Manager at the Swiss-Prot Group, Geneva (ViralZone)
Patricia Palagi, Head of the SIB Training Group
Fabio Rinaldi, Group Leader at the University of Zürich and Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research

The discussion revolves around the themes of communication, training, biocuration, open science, collaboration and sustainability of resources. 

Click to access to specific parts of the discussion:
- Communication 04:16
- Training 10:33
- Data curation & annotation 16:41
- Collaboration, open science, data integration 31:27
- Funding and sustainability of resources 36:49
- Conclusions and questions from audience 39:44

Session Chairs: Maïa Berman (Communications Manager, SIB Lausanne), Julien Roux (DBM Bioinformatics Core Facility, University Hospital Basel, Department of Biomedicine)

About the SIB Days: this internal conference of the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is organized every two years. Its ambition? To give a voice to SIB's 80 Groups across Switzerland, through a diversity of bioinformatics topics, and to offer its 800 SIB Members an opportunity to meet and learn about each other’s research and activities in a friendly atmosphere. Due to this year’s events, the conference has taken place virtually for the first time, on 8-10 June 2020. Most of the talks could be made public post-event.


Read more about the SIB Days: https://www.sib.swiss/about-sib/news/10713-virtual-sib-days-2020-swiss-bioinformatics-highlights-recorded-sessions