African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ASBCB) Omics Codeathon – October 2022

General Applications Now Open: ASBCB Omics Codeathon

The  African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ASBCB) with support from The National Institutes of Health Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS) is pleased to announce a virtual omics-focused codeathon.

Codeathon Date: Oct 1 – 9, 2022

Apply to participate here.

We’re now in the general applications phase. Participant applications are due on Friday July 22, 2022 by midnight 11.59pm CAT.

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Terra 101 | DS-I Africa Workshop [April 12-13, 2022]

On April 12-13, 2022, the Terra Team lead an Introduction to Terra (Terra 101 )workshop for DS-I Africa. This interactive workshop explored the skills necessary to start working and collaborating securely in Terra. Through hands-on exercises, participants learned how to launch a Cloud Environment and run interactive analysis tools like Jupyter Notebooks, RStudio, and Galaxy.   

Check out the slides and tutorial workspace to get started.

• Slides
• Terra-Notebooks-Quickstart tutorial workspace
• Recordings of Day 1 and Day 2

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Grants give African data science a boost

Infrastructure and capacity development are a big focus of boosting health research on the African continent. This work will be facilitated through five-year grants awarded by the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund’s Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa, to three data scientists at the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM), based at the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS).

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DS-I Africa Virtual Symposium Platform

Welcome

In coordination with the launch of the NIH Common Fund’s Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa) program, NIH hosted an online-only, Virtual Symposium Platform in Summer 2020 that was free, open to anyone interested, and interactive. 

The goals of the Platform were to:

1. Publicize the NIH funding opportunities and communicate key priorities of the DS-I Africa program.
2. Engage participants in robust scientific sessions that examine the state of data science across Africa.
3. Encourage networking across disciplines, sectors, and geographies.

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GFBR 2022 – call for applications now open!

The Global Forum on Bioethics in Research (GFBR) will hold a two-day meeting in Cape Town, South Africa on 29 & 30 November 2022 on the theme: “Ethics of artificial intelligence in global health research”.

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Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa) program

Program Snapshot

The NIH Common Fund’s Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa) program will leverage data science technologies and prior NIH investments to develop solutions to the continent’s most pressing public health problems. Data drive scientific discovery. Recent technological advances, in Africa and around the world, mean researchers are collecting enormous volumes of data. The collection and analysis of data are fundamental activities that underpin the health field. Africa’s ability to fully extract useful knowledge from these data will lead to discoveries that can impact global health.

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Deep Learning Indaba for 2022

After not taking place these past two years, we excited to announce the Deep Learning Indaba for 2022 that will be held in Tunis, Tunisia, from the 21st to the 26th of August.

Featuring:
• Keynote talks from thought leaders in the fields of ML/AI and Ethics
• Opportunities to learn skills in our practical (programming) sessions
• Mentorship opportunities
• A Research in Africa Showcase Day
• Two days of Workshops on topics including NLP; AI in Healthcare; Reinforcement Learning; Machine learning at the Edge; AI Governance and Policy
And Much More! Visit our website regularly and follow us on Twitter for updates.

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NIH awards nearly $75M to catalyze data science research in Africa

The National Institutes of Health is investing about $74.5 million over five years to advance data science, catalyze innovation and spur health discoveries across Africa. Under its new Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa) program, the NIH is issuing 19 awards to support research and training activities. DS-I Africa is an NIH Common Fund program that is supported by the Office of the Director and 11 NIH Institutes, Centers and Offices.

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