Global BioImage Analysts’ Society - GloBIAS

Session

Poster Session

Authors

Christa Walther (1)

Affiliations

1. German BioImaging - GerBI GMB

Keywords

BioImage Analysis, society, survey

Abstract text

The Global BioImage Analysts’ Society (GloBIAS) will be a scientific society for everyone interested in biological image analysis. The non-profit association aims to officially launch as a registered society within the next 20 months. The project is based on the successful initiative "Network of European BioImage Analysts" (NEUBIAS) with the idea to provide the community with a sustainable base (educationally and financially) through a formal society. Initial funding for the foundation process has been provided by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (Award: Advancing Imaging Through Collaborative Projects) for the first two years, with the grant being hosted by German BioImaging (GerBI-GMB). After this period the society aims to sustain itself by membership fees and revenues from activities such as in-person workshops and publications.

The society is open to anyone working and interested in bioimage analysis, such as:

1) BioImage Analysts applying a variety of image analysis tools, open-source software and computational infrastructures, enabling quantitative measurements of biological systems using image data to tackle life science questions,

2) BioImage Analysis Software Developers: Experts with strong backgrounds in computational science and programming who implement new software tools and utilities for bioimage analysis and maintain those resources, 

3) Life Science Researchers whose major work is in “wet lab” research but have strong interests in bioimage analysis, conducting software implementations and applying bioimage analysis tools to their biological questions, 

4) Imaging Scientists providing training in the acquisition of image data, developing and maintaining microscope systems and advising on the possible workflows for data analysis.

 

The exchange of ideas and techniques and provision of feedback, which has been at the core of the NEUBIAS concept, will remain a strong component of the work by GloBIAS. The aim is to multiply interactions, create guidelines and repositories for trainings and consolidate standards for bioimage analysis. By engaging world-wide with groups of people working in BioImage Analysis we hope to develop a strong community that allows the society to represent BioImage Analysis and the people working in this field with a strong voice.

Several work groups (consisting of grant applicants, a community manager and volunteers) are already working on the main objectives of the grant. We invite anyone interested to get involved to get in touch to help us develop different aspects, such as:

• founding the society/ association: selecting the country to register the society - currently creating a country candidate list
• contributing to a BioImage Analysts’ community survey: the results will be used to define the community strategy and create a business plan for the society
• improving communications: Building an online presence / social media presence to help us to become visible globally and enhance the exchange outside Europe and the US
• organising annual in-person BioImage Analysts’ workshops
• providing training material for BioImage Analysts to help train the trainers and gather reusable teaching material for BioImage Analysis
• publishing a textbook (Bioimage Data Analysis series next edition edition)