VIB Data Core

The core ELIXIR Belgium team at VIB, headed by Frederik Coppens, is responsible for the coordination and development  of the Belgian ELIXIR Node. The team, located in Gent, is also active in research data management, data analysis platforms and availability of COVID-19 data. They have developed guidelines and tools for effective data management (RDM Guide, Datahub), reproducible computational analysis (useGalaxy.be) and facilitating SARS-CoV-2 data submission to the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA). 

As Head of Node, Frederik Coppens represents ELIXIR Belgium in the ELIXIR Heads of Nodes Committee. He is also co-chair of the ELIXIR Galaxy Community and has, together with members of his team, leading roles in the ELIXIR-led European projects EOSC-Life, ELIXIR-CONVERGE and BY-COVID. Through representation in the national 1+MG steering committee and the Working Group on infrastructure, the team is involved in the development and implementation of a secure, sensitive human data infrastructure in Belgium.

Since the Node's inception, the core team has been involved with over a dozen ELIXIR Implementation studies targeting a wide range of objectives in the Plant Sciences and Galaxy Communities, and with multiple Tasks in the Tools, Data and Interoperability Platforms.