2021eResearchReport - Flipbook - Page 10
Section 2
Supporting
Research
As research becomes increasingly
global, with greater demand for transand interdisciplinary collaboration
to solve the world’s grand challenge
problems, researchers require
additional support. UCT eResearch
has been working to break down the
silos among research-supporting
staff departments, as well as between
support staff and researchers, to
ensure UCT research can remain
competitive globally and navigate the
changes in the research landscape.
Partnering to bring
African genomics
home
“As technologies for
biomedical sciences advance,
we have moved to a datarich – information-poor
paradigm.”
~ Professor Nicola Mulder
Head of Computational
Biology Division at UCT.
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As modern technologies advance, data
generation within biomedical sciences
has become faster, cheaper and more
accessible to researchers in Africa. But
to transform that data into information
and knowledge, African researchers
need access to tools and infrastructure.
H3ABioNet is collaborating with UCT
eResearch to build an Open Data
science platform as part of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) Data for Africa
Initiative.
“As technologies for biomedical sciences
advance, we have moved to a datarich – information-poor paradigm,”
says Professor Nicola Mulder, head of
Computational Biology Division at UCT.
“Poor infrastructure has traditionally
meant African scientists face major
limitations in their ability to analyse the
data they gather.”
Through H3ABioNet, a large PanAfrican bioinformatics network of 27
institutions in 17 countries, Mulder and
colleagues have been working to build
capacity for genomics research, including
training, infrastructure development and
building research tools, workflows and
data pipelines.
As part of this effort Mulder is now
leading a project funded by the NIH
through its Common Fund’s Harnessing
Data Science for Health Discovery and
Innovation in Africa programme, to build
an Open Data science platform for African
scientists called eLwazi.
“Ulwazi is the isiXhosa work meaning
knowledge or information,” says Mulder,
“and Olwazi means big rock in Luganda,
symbolising robustness and endurance.
eLwazi is thus adapted from these two
words.”
As Mulder’s research is by its nature
data-intensive, she has collaborated with
UCT eResearch in the past, particularly
around the use of, and investment in,
the ilifu data-intensive research cloud
developed in response to the big data
needs of the Square Kilometre Array
(SKA) project, but designed to support
bioinformatics in data-intensive research.
For this reason, Mulder invited UCT
eResearch to be consortium partners
in her bid to build eLwazi, particularly
with regards to data management and
administrative access to this computing
cluster, among other things.
“Funding for projects of
this nature is incredibly
competitive,” says Renate
Meyer, eResearch Analyst.
“This is what makes
the collaborative model
successful. Rather than
expecting the partners to bring
similar expertise to a project
of this nature, the consortium
can draw on the broader
institution through UCT
eResearch.”
eLwazi: an African tool for African science
“It is important that an Open Data
platform like this considers the local
context for the community it is meant to
serve,” says Mulder. “We need to factor
in the research infrastructure (or lack
thereof), the reality of poor Internet
connectivity, national data sharing
legislation, and possibly most importantly,
Supporting research
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