Overview

The purpose of this workshop is to train and capacitate African technical staff (software developers, system administrators etc.) from eLwazi ODSP and other DS-I Africa projects on GA4GH interoperability standards for data discovery, federated data analysis, task and workflow execution with specific use cases. GA4GH's mission is to accelerate progress in genomic research and human health by cultivating a common framework of standards and harmonised approaches for effective and responsible genomic and health-related data sharing.

The eLwazi Open Data Science Platform as part of DS-I Africa will host a training workshop on a variety of GA4GH frameworks and standards for data discovery, interoperability and compute. The topics that will be covered include setting up GA4GH services such as the Data Repository Service (DRS), Tool Registry Service (TRS), and Workflow Execution Service (WES), GA4GH passports, Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI) standards and Data Use Oversight Service (DUOS). Compatibility across High Performance Computing systems will also be explored. At the end of the workshop, participants will have an understanding of these GA4GH services, standards and APIs and be able to implement them in their compute infrastructures.

The trainees will be expected to follow at least one of the introductory GA4GH tutorials/webinars prior to attending the workshop. These can be accessed at:
GA4GH 101 Webinar (Oct 2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwZujWW-D6A

Training application

Nomination by DS-I Africa Project Principal Investigators

Skill level of training

Specialised/Advanced

Language

English

Credential awarded

Workshop certificate

Type of training

Face-to-face

Venue

University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

Opening/Closing date

Organisers

Tshinakaho Malesa, Gerrit Botha, Jonathan Lawson, Angela Page, Brian O’Connor, Sumir Panji, Nicola Mulder

Sponsors

eLwazi ODSP, DS-I Africa, GA4GH Inc, CINECA

Intended Audience

This workshop intends to train and capacitate African technical staff, system administrators and software developers that will be working on the compute infrastructure to make the data available for the research hubs etc. on eLwazi ODSP and other DS-I Africa projects.

Selection criteria / process

Nomination by DS-I Africa Project Principal Investigators

Prerequisites

• Participants must be working with the computational infrastructure and services for hosting and making their data available to their DS-I Research projects.
• Unix / Linux experience and working on the command line
• Access to compute infrastructure and ability to install and test any of the GA4GH applications on their systems
• Experience with cloud computing, understanding of APIs, remote access to cluster
• Viewed the introductory GA4GH videos provided in the link

Learning outcomes

• Be familiar with the GA4GH starter kit
• Have an understanding of the applicability of some of the GA4GH standards such as DRS, TRS and WES
• Have an understanding of how to implement the some of the GA4GH standards on their compute systems

Limitations

This workshop will only provide a foundational basis for continued learning of GA4GH API standards and services and their implementation into eLwazi ODSP and other DS-I Africa projects and will not make one an expert.