It’s the holidays, which means the season of giving is here. And we’re excited to hear that our Data Biosphere partners over at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) are leading the way with a timely offering. No, it’s not the latest gadget wrapped up with shiny paper and a big bow -- it's much better than that. They've just announced a new Fellows Program to support early-career scientists using the BioData Catalyst computational ecosystem. So hurry up and get your holiday shopping done now, because applications open today - Friday, December 20. 

For context, BioData Catalyst (formerly known as DataSTAGE) is a cloud-based, secure ecosystem for heart, lung, blood, and sleep researchers to find, access, share, and analyze large-scale datasets. As described more fully on the program website, this fellowship opportunity involves a one-year stipend and coverage for compute costs to analyze major datasets such as TOPMed and GTEx in any of the participating environments, which includes Terra, in conjunction with our partners University of Chicago’s Gen3 and UC Santa Cruz’s Dockstore partners. 

If you're interested in pursuing this opportunity, but haven't yet set your sights on a particular analysis environment, we encourage you to consider choosing our “stack”: that is, the collaboration between Gen3, Dockstore, and Terra. The interoperability between these three platforms enables Terra to access a number of datasets beyond TOPMed and GTEx, including data such as CCDG, CMG and 1000 Genomes, which will be similarly made available through NHGRI’s AnVIL program. Additionally, our support and education teams, across all institutions, have experience supporting TOPMed and GTEx researchers through domain-specific onboarding workshops and webinars, which can help you get started quickly to take maximum advantage of the fellowship.

Whatever platform you choose to use, this fellowship is a great opportunity to grow your research through the BioData Catalyst Platform, so don't let it slip by if you're eligible*. The deadline for applications is January 17, 2020, which will be upon us before you can say federated data analysis.

If you or anyone you know is interested in applying, here is the application form. We can provide you with support in your application around the data, tools, and software that will be used as part of your methods and materials (#21 in the application form). If needed; just get in touch with our Customer Success team (customersuccess@broadinstitute.org) and we will be happy to assist you. 

* This funding opportunity is available to US-based researchers only.