Side Events

Applying the power of networks to deliver global impact – a meeting of the global imaging infrastructure community. Imaging technologies are critical to health, energy, environment, and agriculture, and access to advanced imaging technologies are essential to addressing major societal challenges. Imaging national research infrastructures are increasingly being organised into networks which offer a number of benefits beyond those delivered by individual institutions: they provide a national reach across innovation precincts, a connected workforce, a strong alliance of stakeholders, and a highly collaborative ecosystem ideally positioned to deliver global impact. This meeting will explore the way that imaging infrastructures are collaborating around shared challenges to maximise impact at a national and international level. Examples will be discussed across health, energy, environment and agriculture.

This mini symposium will bring together health research infrastructure experts from Europe, Australia, Asia Pacific and other regions. The focus is the exchange of information related to national and international health research infrastructure initiatives and collaboration opportunities. It will cover research infrastructures including phenomics and other omics, imaging, therapeutics and population outcomes. Objectives include progression of collaborations developed at the Australian and European Health Research Infrastructure Symposium held in Prato in September 2023 and development of new collaborations.

The GSO on research infrastructures is a working group under the G7. The Group serves the shared policy goals of its member countries in ensuring that world class Research Infrastructures are available to promote high quality research. This, in particular, is important in areas which require international cooperation on global challenges or where it makes sense to pool investments to secure the best value for money. The GSO is composed of representatives from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, UK, USA, and the European Commission. Participating countries are represented on the GSO by government officials and experts in the areas of international research infrastructures and international relations. The OECD acts an observer to ensure good coordination with the Global Science Forum (GSF).

How can Research Infrastructures prepare data that better meets communities’ research needs? What are the drivers for this new role? What are the challenges and opportunities? What are the necessary investments in infrastructure, technology, standards and capacities? In this session, we will present these outcomes from the WorldFAIR project and address these questions.

This event focuses on the integration of existing research infrastructures into activities that investigate the impact of chemical exposure on health and the factors influencing it. The goal is to establish a Pacific Regional infrastructure network, leveraging existing networks from Europe and North America, to contribute to global efforts in creating a comprehensive human biomonitoring system.

The growing digitalisation of science and research increases the demand for greening Research Infrastructures (RI). This event will address different aspects of improving energy efficiency and decreasing the environmental impact of RIs, including technical solutions, standards and regulations, adoption of best practices in digital infrastructure operations, sustainability policy recommendations.

Facilitated by AURIN, with key contributions from other NCRIS-funded facilities such as ACCESS-NRI, ARDC and NCI, as well as international participation from Cooling Singapore 2.0 program, the 1/2 day workshop will explore how to establish a replicable Urban Climate Research Infrastructure, bringing together (1) a coherent urban monitoring system in major cities and regional centres, (2) a scalable digital research infrastructure that will allow for seamless data exchange and long-term storage, and support effective model orchestration, and (3) a modular model orchestration, based on Docker-created and Kubernetes-managed containers.

The session is proposed by EGI, the largest federation of research data centres in the world. However, the contributions to this session would be selected from the 20+ projects in which EGI collaborates with European RIs.

This workshop is dedicated to fostering collaboration among microfabrication facilities to strengthen development pipelines. We will explore innovative networking strategies that not only optimise the use of research infrastructure but also enhance the value and impact of public investments. By joining forces, microfab facilities can expand their operational models to support a broader spectrum of development stages, thereby servicing a wider array of clients and communities. Engage with expert panel discussions, participate in dynamic dialogues, and help shape pioneering approaches to development in the microfabrication sector.

Join us to hear from Indigenous Elders who will share perspectives on 65,000+ years of astronomy in Australia. Guests will gain insight into Indigenous knowledge systems and how scientific knowledge is passed down generations through song, dance, and oral tradition. Guests will also view a Planetarium screening of “The Earth Above” and take part in outdoor stargazing with telescopes

The GSO on research infrastructures is a working group under the G7. The Group serves the shared policy goals of its member countries in ensuring that world class Research Infrastructures are available to promote high quality research. This, in particular, is important in areas which require international cooperation on global challenges or where it makes sense to pool investments to secure the best value for money. The GSO is composed of representatives from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, UK, USA, and the European Commission. Participating countries are represented on the GSO by government officials and experts in the areas of international research infrastructures and international relations. The OECD acts an observer to ensure good coordination with the Global Science Forum (GSF).

This ICRI 2024 side event aims to shed light on the untapped potential for research infrastructure collaboration with partners in ASEAN and encourage further exploration with this rapidly developing region. The ten member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam (and soon Timor Leste) – are an economic powerhouse with a combined population of over 672 million. ASEAN is a diverse region known for its economic growth, biodiversity, cultural richness, and its vibrant and increasingly tech-savvy young population. ASEAN countries offer a wealth of opportunities in research infrastructure that are often overlooked. This event explores the untapped potential and emerging trends in research infrastructure across ASEAN member states, and highlights opportunities for international collaboration.

The ‘Global Ecosystem Research Infrastructure’ (GERI) is an integrated network of six site-based research infrastructures around the world, that are analogous but independent, and have come together to better understanding ecosystems across global biomes. GERI activities go beyond that of their original design and are a large value add to the research communities and sponsors, alike. GERI focuses on establishing the pathways for network-to-network activities across continents and cultures, garnering community support, eliminating barriers for researchers to work together, and federating our data together. In this way, GERI prepares and provides these data to better understand environmental change at a global scale and supports the next decade of Earth system science research.

Partnerships are crucial for successful research infrastructures. Examples like Australian (AU) BioCommons and ELIXIR (EU) demonstrate successful local and global collaborations, enhancing life science research. This interactive meeting will showcase successful outcomes, discuss strategies, and share best practices for establishing global partnerships in research infrastructures.

This session will explore how research infrastructures can enhance climate action strategies. The discussion will cover developing innovative climate risk services, informed decision-making for adaptation and mitigation, fostering international cooperation among RIs for data sharing and knowledge exchange, and enhancing RI capabilities to address climate risks.

Australia is a mega biodiverse continent with many species found nowhere else. The best estimates are that only 30% of our biodiversity has been identified and described. Biological and paleontological collections, including those held in museums, herbaria, research institutions and government, provide the fundamental distributed infrastructure that underpins all we know and understand about species. 43% of described species in Australia are only known from collection specimens. Advanced technologies, including genomics, advanced imaging, artificial intelligence and machine learning, are rapidly expanding the potential role of biological collections in supporting science, industry and government decision-making. Individual collections play an important geographic, taxonomic and socio-cultural role in any national system demanding a distributed approach supported by effective partnership and coordination mechanisms. This symposium, hosted by the Queensland Museum (QM), will explore the design of distributed research infrastructure, focusing on biological collections, as a potential pattern for other NRI. The symposium will include a special back-of-house Queensland State Collection tour hosted by QM’s biodiversity and geosciences team.