The programming and statistics environment R has emerged as one of the most popular environments to process and analyse metabolomics datasets. A major benefit of such an environment is the possibility to connect different tools into more complex workflows, and to benefit from the wealth of packages, datasets, and tutorials in statistics in general.
The #metaRbolomics community started with a first workshop at the Metabolomics Society conference in Dublin (2016), and the plan was to afterwards write up a short review on how to combine a few R packages into a workflow. After the de.NBI metaRbolomics Hackathon at the venerable Leucorea in Lutherstadt Wittenberg (2019), 19 authors published a review of nearly 300 R packages in Bioconductor, CRAN and elsewhere (10.3390/metabo9100200).
Already back in 2019 we scheduled the 2nd metaRbolomics Hackathon for 2021, and we are excited that it will take place from Monday till Wednesday 22.-24.03.2021 as an online workshop.
Over the last few years, Bioconductor packages for metabolomics and proteomics data analysis started converging towards a common mass spectrometry infrastructure, and we aim to continue working on improved findability, interoperability and reusability of different packages. The agenda will have fixed plenary slots each day 9-11 and 15-17 (MET). The online communication channels (videoconference, chat and docs) will remain open all the time, and we will facilitate that breakout groups can meet in between and work on various topics.
We also intend to run an embedded “Data Clinic” event on Tuesday 23.03. @ 16:00 (MET), which will also be announced to the user communities. The idea is to have a one-hour helpdesk-like slot where users and contributors can show up and meet the experts, ask anything about R code, data, pull requests etc., just like you would at a face2face conference during the coffee break.
Please see https://www.denbi.de/training/1143-de-nbi-elixir-de-metarbolomics-hackathon for details. And stay tuned for a face2face edition in the hopefully not-too-distant future.
Text: Steffen Neumann