Late last year, we proposed here a kitchen-sink approach to generating a Network of BioThings, and I’m very pleased to say that things are moving along very nicely. We started out the discussion in a private Google Group among our own lab’s friends and collaborators, just to have a smidge of control over the direction of the discussion. Given the enthusiasm and relevant expertise, we quickly extended that one or two links further in our social network, and we recently made that discussion forum completely public. We’d welcome your participation.

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Credit: Iddo Friedberg

I’m also very happy that online discussions are also translating into in-person events. We currently have three such events planned:

The first Network of BioThings meetup

The first Network of BioThings Hackathon (West Coast edition)

The first Network of BioThings Hackathon (European edition)

I view the overarching goal for all these events to be establishing pilot collaborations that demonstrate the feasibility of the Network of BioThings. These pilot projects presumably will form the preliminary data for downstream grant proposals, and of course evidence of successful collaboration among PIs is also a critically important review criterion. I am greatly looking forward to these events!