The Australian BioCommons Bring Your Own Data (BYOD) Platform enables highly accessible, highly available, highly scalable analysis and data sharing capabilities for the benefit of life science researchers nationally.

The Australian BioCommons is new research infrastructure which aims to enhance the productivity, capability and capacity of Australian research biologists and research informaticians. A key component of the Australian BioCommons is a Bring Your Own Data (BYOD) Platform – a suite of software and workflow development and deployment activities.

The expected capability enhancements include:

  • Integrating the Bioplatforms Australia (BPA)-funded instrument base for genomics, proteomics and metabolomics;
  • Enhanced accessibility to reference data prioritised by Australian research communities;
  • Managed access to datastores and compute infrastructures to meet analysis demand;
  • Adoption of best practice features and functionalities realised within the international Galaxy project.
Start date 2 March 2020
Expected completion date 31 December 2022
Investment by ARDC $2,210,000
Co-investment partners
The University of Melbourne
Bioplatforms Australia (BPA)
The Australian BioCommons
Australia’s Academic and Research Network (AARNet)
Australian Access Federation (AAF)
National Computational Infrastructure (NCI)
Pawsey Supercomputing Center
Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation (QCIF)
Melbourne Bioinformatics
Sydney Informatics Hub
Lead node
1 GUI-based BYOD platform
The improvement and expansion of a highly accessible Graphical User Interface (GUI)-based BYOD platform (Galaxy), that gives all life sciences researchers, including informaticians, access to a well-structured, worlds-best-practice bioinformatics workbench for research and training.
2 Command Line Interface BYOD platform
The development of a complementary Command Line Interface (CLI)-focused BYOD platform, providing a scalable and flexible set of open programmatic resources to create, access and exchange workflows, tools and training across any national and institutional compute infrastructures.
3 Data Infrastructure
The development of a data infrastructure that will connect -omics instruments and reference datasets to the analysis infrastructure, underpinned by a capability to transport data nationally and internationally.

Core features

Community support and involvement
The BYOD Platform is an outcome of considerable research community consultation. The concept has been extensively developed and refined with the community to bring the community together and further strengthen it.
Research transformation:
The resulting platform will position Australia at the forefront of bioinformatics infrastructure and substantially improve Australian researcher’s access to bioinformatics

Who is this project for?

Australian BioCommons will benefit the majority of life science researchers for whom bioinformatics is an increasingly important part of their research activities as well as a smaller set of leading researchers who develop biodata analysis techniques and for whom bioinformatics is a primary research methodology.

What does this project enable?

The BioCommons will enhance the productivity, capability and capacity of Australian research biologists and research informaticians by providing a new ability to apply and improve a growing array of digitally enabled bioinformatics research techniques, and to stay at the forefront of a wave of international investment and developments in these new technologies

Handy resources

Visit the Australian BioCommons

The University of MelbourneVisit
Bioplatforms Australia (BPA)Visit
The Australian BioCommonsVisit
Australia’s Academic and Research Network (AARNet)Visit
Australian Access Federation (AAF)Visit
National Computational Infrastructure (NCI)Visit
Pawsey Supercomputing CenterVisit
Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation (QCIF)Visit
Melbourne BioinformaticsVisit
Sydney Informatics HubVisit