Galaxy Community Conference 2019

Dr Chris Barnett attended the Galaxy Community Conference 2019 in Freiburg, Germany. He presented on "Galaxy Computational Chemistry" and overviewed his collaborative research on creating computational tools, the BRIDGE platform (see the publication) and the Galaxy computational chemistry community. Applications for the tools include investigation of molecular conformation, protein dynamics and bio-orthogonal sugars. Tools for analysis of bio-orthogonal sugars and post analysis of ab initio MD simulations are in further development. Many of the tools are currently available at https://cheminformatics.usegalaxy.eu in collaboration with Björn Grüning, Simon Bray and the University of Freiburg.

Conference highlights: The fantastic and friendly Galaxy community. This conference also mixed training with technical talks with diverse research talks. I upskilled, learnt about new technical features and development and was exposed to applied research from multiple disciplines. The finale of the conference, the cofest was an opportunity to find out even more about new projects, code, socialise and share ideas. I'm most excited about the upcoming interactive tools feature!

Upcoming Galaxy Computational Chemistry South Africa: A South African Galaxy Computational Chemistry server will be available on the ilifu research cloud in late 2019, see here for more details.

Acknowledgement: Chris acknowledges travel support and funding from the NRF Research Development Grants for Y-Rated Researchers and subsidised by NRF Incentive funding for rated researchers, UCT University Research Council and the Galaxy Community Conference Fellowship 2019.