Seats are filling fast for international gathering of data management experts

Users of the integrated Rule Oriented Data System (iRODS) will gather at Utrecht University in the Netherlands June 26-27 for an annual opportunity to discuss iRODS-enabled applications and discoveries.

The 2019 meeting is sponsored by Cloudian, DDN, RENCI, SUSE, Utrecht University, Western Digital, and the iRODS Consortium, the membership-based foundation that leads development and support of iRODS.

This year’s UGM will highlight new software releases, including the addition of a Metalnx web GUI, NFSRODS, which presents iRODS as NFS, and updates to other existing clients. Building on last year’s addition of the storage tiering and automated ingest capabilities, iRODS has added new capabilities, including frameworks for both publishing and indexing.

“iRODS is maturing into an ecosystem that allows users to create a customized system from ingest to institutional repository,” said Jason Coposky, executive director of the iRODS Consortium. “iRODS capabilities provide coverage for the most common use cases by providing policy rather than requiring new code for every deployment.”

In addition to showcasing the latest core iRODS developments, the UGM will feature 14 talks from institutions and governments deploying iRODS to address their data management challenges. Among the use cases to be featured are:

• SODAR – the iRODS-powered System for Omics Data Access and Retrieval
  Presenters from the Berlin Institute of Health will showcase their efforts to efficiently work with large amounts of life sciences data while supporting principles that make that data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reuseable (FAIR) and that allow collaboration between multiple institutes. Their open source SODAR solution, which is built on iRODS, will be demonstrated by showing their flagship rare disease genetics use case, from bulk data import to the browsing of metadata in their integrative genomics viewer (IGV).
• A Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) Data Repository Service for native iRODS
  This presentation premieres the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ implementation of a GA4GH Data Repository Service (formerly the GA4GH Data Object Service), that can run on a base iRODS server. Using this service allows iRODS to integrate with workflow and data access services in the area of genomics and bio-sciences that follow the emerging standards of the GA4GH consortium.

• Surgical Critical Care Initiative: Leveraging iRODS to accomplish multi-site data collection, harmonization, and analytics to generate Clinical Decision Support Tools
  Presenters from Duke University and the iRODS Consortium will showcase how – to support the development of Clinical Decision Support Tools in both civilian and military health systems – the Surgical Critical Care Initiative (SC2i), a Department of Defense funded consortium of Federal and non-Federal institutions, leverages iRODS to harmonize clinical, laboratory, and bio-bank data and centralize 30+ million high-quality data elements to enhance complex decision making in acute and trauma care.

Bookending this year’s UGM are two events for those who hope to learn more about iRODS. On June 24, the Consortium is offering three training tracks focused on different levels: beginner, administration, and policy. After the conference, on June 28, users have the chance to register for a hackathon sponsored by the event’s host, Utrecht University. The hackathon is devoted to informal conversations between users of iRODS and the entire core development staff.

Learn more and register for this year’s UGM at irods.org/ugm2019.