Welcome to the 1st cohort of OLS program!

Niklas Morberg (CC BY-NC 2.0)

The OLS-1 program

Purpose: Training for early stage researchers and young leaders interested in furthering their Open Science skills

Outcome: Ambassadors for Open Science practice, training and education across multiple European and international bioinformatics communities.

Process: A 15-week mentoring & training program, based on the Mozilla Open Leader program, helping participants in becoming Open Science ambassadors by using three principles:

  1. Sharing essential knowledge required to create, lead, and sustain an Open Science project.
  2. Connecting members across different communities, backgrounds, and identities by creating space in this program for them to share their experiences and expertise.
  3. Empowering them to become effective Open Science ambassadors in their communities.

Goals and Learning Objectives

The vision of Open Life Science program is to strengthen Open Science skills for early stage researchers and young leaders in life science.

At the end of the program, our participants will be able to:

  • Describe and define the terms openness, open science, open leadership, community interactions, value exchanges, inclusivity, accessibility, open Science practices in developing resources and training
  • Learn how to apply those principles to open leadership and working open in their projects and communities . Learn how to collect, invite, and tell stories that demonstrate how and why openness benefits the communities they serve
  • Give original examples for the types of openness in science
  • Design
    • Illustrate the need for a project, its vision, and its goals
    • Embrace and communicate the benefits of Open Science and how to strategically apply different open practices to their work
    • Identify the public resources to share their data
    • Identify the different type of Open Access and associated journals
  • Build
    • Start any project with openness in mind from day one
    • Setup a project repository on GitHub using best practices for enabling collaboration
    • Choose and apply open licenses appropriately
  • Empower
    • Create and enforce a safe working environment
    • Promote the values of Open Science to empower others to lead and collaborate
    • Include a broad range of contributors in their work
    • Communicate their work and vision in a 2min demo of elevator pitch
  • Lead an open project in science

Timeline

OLS’s first cohort (OLS-1), known as “Open Seeds”, was conducted from January 2020 until May 2020 with 29 project leaders working on 20 projects.

  • October 25, 2019 : Opening of the applications

  • November 27, 2019 : Pre-application webinar - Notes with Zoom call link

  • December 8, 2019 : Closing of the applications

  • December 20, 2019 : Successful applicants announced

  • January 20, 2020: Start of the program

  • May 18, 2020: End of the program

Schedule

During the program,

  • Mentors and mentees meet every 2 weeks for a 30 minutes call
  • Mentees participate every ~2 weeks to 90-minutes cohort calls during which the program leaders introduce new topics and resources, facilitate break-out discussions, and invite expert from the field to give talks
  • Mentees can participate to skill-up, Q&A or coworking session in the weeks without cohort calls
  • Mentors take part to mentoring workshop and calls

Organizers will inform participants of the week schedule by email.

Subscribe to the OLS calendar

Week Call Date Topic Agenda
Week 01 (start. January 20, 2020) Mentor-Mentee   Meet your mentor! Meet each other and discuss your personal motivation, expectations, working practices and project goals
  Mentor January 17, 2020 (16:00 Universal Time) Mentor training  
  Mentor January 20, 2020 (11:00 Universal Time) Mentor training  
Week 02 (start. January 27, 2020) Cohort January 29, 2020 (13:00 Universal Time) Welcome to Open Life Science! Meet other members of your cohort, Share project vision, Intro to working openly (open canvas)
Week 03 (start. February 03, 2020) Mentor-Mentee   Meet your mentor! Discuss assignments from the cohort call & concrete implementations
Week 04 (start. February 10, 2020) Cohort February 12, 2020 (18:00 Universal Time) Tooling and roadmapping for Open projects Working with GitHub as a community hub: Markdown as a tool to make websites, Licence, Goals and Roadmap, Contributors, Code of Conduct
Week 05 (start. February 17, 2020) Mentor-Mentee   Meet your mentor!  
  Cohort February 19, 2020 (13:00 Universal Time) GitHub Tutorial  
  Cohort February 19, 2020 (13:00 Universal Time) GitHub tutorial for beginners  
Week 06 (start. February 24, 2020) Cohort February 26, 2020 (13:00 Universal Time) Open Science I: Project Development Developing Open Projects: Open-Source, Software, Hardware, Data
Week 07 (start. March 02, 2020) Mentor-Mentee   Meet your mentor!  
  Mentor March 5, 2020 (19:30 Universal Time) Mentor training  
Week 08 (start. March 09, 2020) Cohort March 11, 2020 (18:00 Universal Time) Open Science II: Knowledge Dissemination Sharing Open Project: Preprint publications, DOI and citation, Open protocols, Open Education & Training
Week 09 (start. March 16, 2020) Mentor-Mentee   Meet your mentor!  
Week 10 (start. March 23, 2020) Cohort March 25, 2020 (13:00 Universal Time) Designing & Empowering for inclusivity Personas and pathways for contributors, Implicit bias & mental health care, Community interactions & Ally-skill
Week 11 (start. March 30, 2020) Cohort April 01, 2020 (17:00 Universal Time) Mental health care, Ally skills and Career Guidance Call  
Week 12 (start. April 06, 2020) Mentor-Mentee   Meet your mentor!  
Week 13 (start. April 13, 2020) Cohort April 15, 2020 (12:00 Universal Time) Open Agenda - Social Call  
Week 14 (start. April 20, 2020) Mentor-Mentee   Meet your mentor! Preparation for the final demos
  Cohort April 22, 2020 (17:00 Universal Time) Group 1 - Final presentation rehearsal Test of the final demos for the group 1
Week 15 (start. April 27, 2020) Cohort April 29, 2020 (17:00 Universal Time) Group 1 - Final presentations & Graduation! 5-minute demos of projects for group 1 (Audience: entire community & public, Open and recorded call)
Week 16 (start. May 3, 2020) Mentor   Mentor wrap up  
Week 17 (start. May 11, 2020) Cohort May 13, 2020 (17:00 Universal Time) Group 2 - Final presentation rehearsal Test of the final demos for the group 2
Week 18 (start. May 18, 2020) Cohort May 20, 2020 (17:00 Universal Time) Group 2 - Final presentations & Graduation! 5-minute demos of projects for group 2 (Audience: entire community & public, Open and recorded call)

Role Descriptions

Mentees

Participants join this program with a project that they either are already working on or want to develop during this program. More details about the role of a mentee can be found here

For the first round of the Open Life Science program, we are happy to have 29 participants with 20 projects.

Mentors

Our mentees are supported in this program by our mentors’ community who have been paired based on the compatibility of expertise and interests of mentors with the requests and requirements of our mentees. Our mentors are Open Science champions with previous experiences in training and mentoring. They are currently working in different professions in data science, publishing, community building, software development, clinical studies, industries, scientific training and IT services.

Mentors advice and inspire

  • Connect: to people, programs, companies
  • Recommend: resources, readings, classes, experiences
  • Feedback: for the mentee to consider
The GitHub avatar of

Aidan Budd

Pronouns: he/him
@aidanbudd

Embo Solutions Gmbh

Expertise:
Community building

More about Aidan

The GitHub avatar of

Andrew Stewart

Pronouns: he/him
@ajstewart_lang

University Of Manchester

Expertise:
Open research, Reproducibility, Psychology

More about Andrew

The GitHub avatar of

Björn Grüning

Pronouns: he/him
@bjoerngruening

Expertise:
Containers, Conda, Galaxy, Python, Training, Reproducible research, Cheminformatics, Genome annotation, High-Throughput-Screening, Epigenetics

More about Björn

The GitHub avatar of

Daniela Saderi

Pronouns: she/her
@Neurosarda

Expertise:
Open scholarship, Community organizing, Research, leadership, Neuroscience

More about Daniela

The GitHub avatar of

Fotis Psomopoulos

Pronouns: he/him
@fopsom

Institute Of Applied Biosciences, Centre For Research And Technology Hellas

Expertise:
Bioinformatics, Machine learning, Training

More about Fotis

The GitHub avatar of

Hao Ye

Pronouns: he/him
@Hao_and_Y

University of Pennsylvania / Community for Rigor

Expertise:
Ecology, Health sciences, R, Git and github, Version control, Time series analysis, Research reproducibility, Community management, Ally skills training

More about Hao

The GitHub avatar of

Holger Dinkel

Pronouns: he/him

Expertise:
Programming (Python), Version control (git), Web services (REST), Anti-procrastination, Protein biology, Bioinformatics, Disorder motifs

More about Holger

The GitHub avatar of

Katrin Leinweber

Pronouns: she/her

Expertise:
Git and GitHub/GitLab, R tidyverse, Python pandas, Make, Bash, LaTeX, Pandoc

More about Katrin

The GitHub avatar of

Caleb Kibet

Pronouns: he/him
@calkibet

Expertise:
Community building, Reproducibility, Computational Biology, Regulatory Genomics

More about Caleb

The GitHub avatar of

Luis Pedro Coelho

Pronouns: he/them
@luispedrocoelho

Fudan University

Expertise:
Microbiome, Computational biology

More about Luis Pedro

The GitHub avatar of

Malvika Sharan

Pronouns: she/her
@malvikasharan

The Alan Turing Institute

Role in OLS: Director of Partnerships and Strategy

Expertise:
Community building, Mentoring, Data Science best practices, Reproducibility, Inclusive and collaborative practices, Python, Version Control, Funding Proposals, Bioinformatics, Algorithm design

More about Malvika

The GitHub avatar of

Mateusz Kuzak

Pronouns: he/him
@matkuzak

Expertise:
Training, Open research software, Community building

More about Mateusz

The GitHub avatar of

Naomi Penfold

Pronouns: she/her/they/them
@npscience

Science Practice, Uk

Expertise:
Grantsmaking, Design thinking, Participatory research, Community building

More about Naomi

The GitHub avatar of

Patricia Herterich

Pronouns: she/her
@pherterich

Dcc, University Of Edinburgh

Role in OLS: Fellowship and Finance Manager

Expertise:
Research data management, Fair data, Collaboration, Library and archiving skills, Open science and community

More about Patricia

The GitHub avatar of

Rodrigo Oliveira Campos

@sayadiguin

Expertise:
Open source communities, Agile culture, Web development, Python programming, DevOps

More about Rodrigo

The GitHub avatar of

Toby Hodges

Pronouns: he/him
@tbyhdgs

The Carpentries

Expertise:
Designing and developing training material, Collaborating with git & github/gitlab, Publishing web content, Wordpress, Jekyll, Github/gitlab pages, Scientific community engagement, Teaching and organising workshops

More about Toby

The GitHub avatar of

Renato Alves

Pronouns: he/him
@renato_alvs

European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)

Expertise:
Full-stack developer, Computational Training, Reproducibility, Computational biology, Metagenomics, Meta-transcriptomics

More about Renato

The GitHub avatar of

Vicky Nembaware

Pronouns: she/her
@VickyNembaware

Expertise:
Bioinformatics, Genomics and Genomic Medicine, Training, Public Engagement, Sickle Cell Disease, Bioinformatics

More about Vicky

The GitHub avatar of

Yo Yehudi

Pronouns: they/them
@yoyehudi

Role in OLS: Executive Director, Business and Development Lead

Expertise:
Software development, Community building, Mentoring

More about Yo

The GitHub avatar of

Harry Smith

@Zebetus

Expertise:
Community Organisation, Event organising, Communication, Physics (Quantum Nanowires)

More about Harry

Mentoring training

Becoming a mentor can be frightening. Mentors will be then guided specially via a mentoring training with 4 calls during the mentorship round:

  • 2 training calls in the beginning of the cohort to get participants trained and prepared for their role as mentors
  • 1 catch-up call in the middle of the cohort to discuss new topics and challenges that might have occurred and address them
  • 1 call at the end to capture experiences of mentors and assess their interest in future cohorts

A public gitter channel will facilitate open discussions among mentors to help them discuss their experiences, challenges and tips and tricks

Our mentors will then gain mentoring skills (active listening, effective questioning, giving feedback) via mentoring training to learn to celebrate successes and approach challenges in mentoring.

Experts

Experts are invited to join cohort calls or individual mentorship calls to share their experience and expertise during the program.

The GitHub avatar of

Athina Tzovara

Pronouns: she/her
@aath0

Expertise:
Machine Learning, Statistics, Python programming, Neuroscience

More about Athina

The GitHub avatar of

Aidan Budd

Pronouns: he/him
@aidanbudd

Embo Solutions Gmbh

Expertise:
Community building

More about Aidan

The GitHub avatar of

Andrew Stewart

Pronouns: he/him
@ajstewart_lang

University Of Manchester

Expertise:
Open research, Reproducibility, Psychology

More about Andrew

The GitHub avatar of

Aleksandra Nenadic

Pronouns: she/her/hers
@aleks_nenadic

University Of Manchester

Expertise:
Open and reproducible research best practices, Training and teaching tech to researchers, Pedagogical approaches to instructor training and curricula development

More about Aleksandra

The GitHub avatar of

Anna Krystalli

Pronouns: she/her
@annakrystalli

University Of Sheffield

Expertise:
R, Reproducible research, Research software, Version control, GIS, Data visualisation.

More about Anna

The GitHub avatar of

Anne Clinio

Pronouns: she/her
@anneclinio

Expertise:
Citizen science and Citizen labs, Open notebooks, Open data policy building, Information science

More about Anne

The GitHub avatar of

Björn Grüning

Pronouns: he/him
@bjoerngruening

Expertise:
Containers, Conda, Galaxy, Python, Training, Reproducible research, Cheminformatics, Genome annotation, High-Throughput-Screening, Epigenetics

More about Björn

The GitHub avatar of

Bhuvana Meenakshi Koteeswaran

Pronouns: she/her
@bhuvanakotees1

Expertise:
Gender gap and bias, Mozilla technologies, Wikimedia projects, Ethical technology praactices

More about Bhuvana

The GitHub avatar of

Daniela Saderi

Pronouns: she/her
@Neurosarda

Expertise:
Open scholarship, Community organizing, Research, leadership, Neuroscience

More about Daniela

The GitHub avatar of

Demitra Ellina

Pronouns: She/her
@j_ellina

F1000Research

Expertise:
Open science, Open research, Open access, Open peer review, Preprints

More about Demitra

The GitHub avatar of

Emmy Tsang

Pronouns: she/her
@emmy_ft

Role in OLS: Director of Finance and Operations

Expertise:
Community strategies, Open research

More about Emmy

The GitHub avatar of

Fotis Psomopoulos

Pronouns: he/him
@fopsom

Institute Of Applied Biosciences, Centre For Research And Technology Hellas

Expertise:
Bioinformatics, Machine learning, Training

More about Fotis

The GitHub avatar of

Bastian Greshake Tzovaras

Pronouns: he/him
@gedankenstuecke

Center For Research & Interdisciplinarity

Expertise:
Bioinformatics, Citizen science, Web development, Python, Personal data, Community management

More about Bastian

The GitHub avatar of

Hao Ye

Pronouns: he/him
@Hao_and_Y

University of Pennsylvania / Community for Rigor

Expertise:
Ecology, Health sciences, R, Git and github, Version control, Time series analysis, Research reproducibility, Community management, Ally skills training

More about Hao

The GitHub avatar of

Holger Dinkel

Pronouns: he/him

Expertise:
Programming (Python), Version control (git), Web services (REST), Anti-procrastination, Protein biology, Bioinformatics, Disorder motifs

More about Holger

The GitHub avatar of

Vinodh Ilangovan

Pronouns: he/him
@I_Vinodh

Expertise:
Community building, Equity diversity and inclusion, Circadian rhythms, Behavioral Neuroscience, Genetics

More about Vinodh

The GitHub avatar of

Jason Williams

Pronouns: he/him
@JasonWilliamsNY

Expertise:
Education and training, Life Science Education, Management and leadership, Bioinformatics, Molecular biology

More about Jason

The GitHub avatar of

Joel Ostblom

Pronouns: he/him
@joelostblom

University Of British Columbia

Expertise:
Static and interactive data visualization, Introductory data science, Reproducible analysis workflows, Image analysis, Python, Git, Project organization, Stem cell biology, Bioengineering

More about Joel

The GitHub avatar of

Kari L. Jordan

Pronouns: she/her
@drkariljordan

Expertise:
Equity and Inclusion, Assessment, Strategic Planning, Project Planning, Public speaking, Leadership

More about Kari

The GitHub avatar of

Katrin Leinweber

Pronouns: she/her

Expertise:
Git and GitHub/GitLab, R tidyverse, Python pandas, Make, Bash, LaTeX, Pandoc

More about Katrin

The GitHub avatar of

Caleb Kibet

Pronouns: he/him
@calkibet

Expertise:
Community building, Reproducibility, Computational Biology, Regulatory Genomics

More about Caleb

The GitHub avatar of

Kirstie Whitaker

Pronouns: she/her
@kirstie_j

Expertise:
Open research, Reproducibility, Community building, Citizen science, Equity and inclusion, Human brain imaging (neuroscience)

More about Kirstie

The GitHub avatar of

Kaitlin Stack Whitney

Pronouns: she/her
@kstackwhitney

Rochester Institute Of Technology

Expertise:
Accessibility, Road ecology, Novel ecosystems, Insects, Zines, OER

More about Kaitlin

The GitHub avatar of

Luis Pedro Coelho

Pronouns: he/them
@luispedrocoelho

Fudan University

Expertise:
Microbiome, Computational biology

More about Luis Pedro

The GitHub avatar of

Mateusz Kuzak

Pronouns: he/him
@matkuzak

Expertise:
Training, Open research software, Community building

More about Mateusz

The GitHub avatar of

Mariana Ruiz Velasco

Pronouns: she/her
@mruizvelley

Expertise:
Programming, Agile teamwork, Industry research, Epigenetics, Genomics, Bioinformatics, Molecular biology

More about Mariana

The GitHub avatar of

Marius van den Beek

Pronouns: he/him
@mariusvdbeek

Expertise:
Galaxy development, tools and workflows, Python programming, testing and debugging, Contributing to open source projects, Bioinformatics, Developmental biology

More about Marius

The GitHub avatar of

Nikolaos Nerantzis

Pronouns: he/him
@nerantzis

Expertise:
Inclusion, Accessibility, Teaching and education

More about Nikolaos

The GitHub avatar of

Naomi Penfold

Pronouns: she/her/they/them
@npscience

Science Practice, Uk

Expertise:
Grantsmaking, Design thinking, Participatory research, Community building

More about Naomi

The GitHub avatar of

Nicola Soranzo

Pronouns: he/him
@NicolaSoranzo

Expertise:
Programming, Open Source, Licensing, Version control, Galaxy, Python, Reproducibility

More about Nicola

The GitHub avatar of

Paula Andrea Martinez

Pronouns: she/her

Expertise:
Biomedical, Bioinformatics, Training and skill-building, Open Science

More about Paula

The GitHub avatar of

Patricia Herterich

Pronouns: she/her
@pherterich

Dcc, University Of Edinburgh

Role in OLS: Fellowship and Finance Manager

Expertise:
Research data management, Fair data, Collaboration, Library and archiving skills, Open science and community

More about Patricia

The GitHub avatar of

Giuseppe Profiti

Pronouns: he/him/his
@GProfiti

Biodec S.R.L

Expertise:
Teaching, Devops, Software development, Bioinformatics, Wiki*, Carpentries, Communities, Databases, Reproducible science

More about Giuseppe

The GitHub avatar of

Rachael Ainsworth

Pronouns: she/her
@rachaelevelyn

Software Sustainability Institute

Expertise:
Astrophysics, Open Science/Research, Reproducibility, Community building, Organising events, Virtual events, GitHub

More about Rachael

The GitHub avatar of

Venkata Satagopam

Pronouns: he/him

Expertise:
Clinical and Translational Medicine Informatics, Data Management & FAIRification, Dynamic Visual Analytics, Text-mining

More about Venkata

The GitHub avatar of

Renato Alves

Pronouns: he/him
@renato_alvs

European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)

Expertise:
Full-stack developer, Computational Training, Reproducibility, Computational biology, Metagenomics, Meta-transcriptomics

More about Renato

The GitHub avatar of

Vicky Nembaware

Pronouns: she/her
@VickyNembaware

Expertise:
Bioinformatics, Genomics and Genomic Medicine, Training, Public Engagement, Sickle Cell Disease, Bioinformatics

More about Vicky

Speakers during cohort calls

Organizers

The GitHub avatar of

Bérénice Batut

Pronouns: she/her
@bebatut

University of Freiburg

Role in OLS: Director of Learning and Technology

Expertise:
Galaxy, Galaxy training, Citizen science, Bioinformatics, High-throughput sequencing, Metagenomics, Wordpress, Jekyll, GitHub/GitLab Pages, Designing and developing training material, Collaborating with Git & GitHub/GitLab, Git, GitHub, GitLab, Publishing web content

More about Bérénice

The GitHub avatar of

Malvika Sharan

Pronouns: she/her
@malvikasharan

The Alan Turing Institute

Role in OLS: Director of Partnerships and Strategy

Expertise:
Community building, Mentoring, Data Science best practices, Reproducibility, Inclusive and collaborative practices, Python, Version Control, Funding Proposals, Bioinformatics, Algorithm design

More about Malvika

The GitHub avatar of

Yo Yehudi

Pronouns: they/them
@yoyehudi

Role in OLS: Executive Director, Business and Development Lead

Expertise:
Software development, Community building, Mentoring

More about Yo

Calls

Cohort calls

The full cohort meetings take place every 2 weeks (unless mentioned otherwise) and last for 90 minutes.

During these calls:

  • Organisers/hosts will introduce new topic of the week
  • Speakers will present their work related to the topic of the week
  • Participants will be given group discussion exercises
  • An open Q&A will be run and notes will be co-developed

    Look for cohort notes shared with you by organisers

  • Exercises will be given for the week to be completed before the mentee-mentor meeting

The calls will be hosted online using the Zoom web-conferencing option. A link for the calls will be shared for each meeting separately.

If you can’t make it to a call:

  • If you have to miss a call, please write your name in the cohort note under “apologies”.

    The call will be recorded and available on the OLS YouTube channel after the call.

  • If you miss two or more calls during the program, we’ll evaluate if you would be able to finish the program.

Mentor-mentee calls

The Mentor-mentee calls take place every 2 weeks (unless mentioned otherwise) and last for 30 minutes.

During these calls:

  • Mentors help their mentees evaluate their understanding of the new topics
  • Mentees will complete their task assigned at the cohort calls using new skills learned that week
  • Mentors and mentee will review progress together where mentees provide constructive feedback

    Look for 1:1 notes shared with you by your mentor

  • Mentors will connect mentees with other experts and get consulted on their project when needed

The calls can use the online communication options that both mentor and mentee agree to use. A few options to explore are the following:

  • Zoom: 40 mins limit for each call
  • Google hangout: Free for members with google account
  • Skype: Free, download the app
  • Whereby.com: Free option, valid upto 4 participants

If a mentor has to miss a mentee-mentor meeting, please discuss it with your mentee and reschedule your call.

If you are unable to make it to any slot together, please find other ways (asynchronous documentation) to interact with your mentee.

Mentor calls

4 mentor call take place during the program.

The calls will be hosted online using the Zoom web-conferencing option. A link for the calls will be shared for each meeting separately.

Communication channels

OLS-1 private Google group

Organizers inform participants of the week schedule by email. An archive of all emails can be found on the private OLS-1 Google group.

An invitation is sent to all participants (mentees, mentors, etc) at the beginning of the program. If it is not the case, please contact the team

Gitter

Outside of the calls, participants (mentees, mentors, etc) are encouraged to discuss together via Gitter.

OLS Google group

Updates regarding new calls for applications, announcements, and final project presentations are posted on the OLS public Google group

Community Participation Guidelines

This project, as part of the Open Life Science community, is committed to providing a welcoming, friendly, and harassment-free environment for everyone to learn and grow by contributing. As a result, we require participants to follow our code of conduct, which may be found in the policies repository.

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