By Judy Siegel-Itzkovich
The iReceptor Plus Project was featured at the Canadian Research Software Conference in Montreal, which took place on May 28-29 in Montreal, Canada.
Managing such a diverse research project for developing software was very complex, given the fact that 19 partner groups from nine countries covering 10 time zones were involved. Originally funded by the CANARIE Network Enabled Platforms program, the iReceptor project has grown through funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, further funding from CANARIE and most recently a joint EU Horizon 2020 and Canadian CIHR grant.
iReceptor Plus technical manager Dr. Brian Corrie of the Simon Fraser University – who was among the speakers discussed the complex scientific – discussed the challenges of running such a complex software engineering project and balancing those challenges against the benefits of such a diverse research collaboration. Also attending the conference from the iReceptor team were developers Jerome Jaglale and Boja Zimonja.
Among those participating in the conference were active developers of research software, computational researchers, students with an interest in computational research, developers of open source software to support research and researchers with an interest in software development
The aims of the event were to further build a cohesive Canadian community of academic research software developer; strengthen the impact of public funds for research; and learn, collaborate, exchange ideas, and discuss common issues affecting software development for academic research.
CANARIE and its provincial and territorial partners form Canada’s National Research and Education Network. This ultra-high-speed network connects Canada’s researchers, educators and innovators to each other and to global data, technology.
Beyond the network, CANARIE funds and promotes reusable research software tools and national research data management initiatives to accelerate discovery, provides identity management services to the academic community and offers advanced networking resources to boost commercialization in Canada’s technology sector.
Established in 1993, CANARIE is a non-profit corporation, with most of its funding provided by the Government of Canada.
iReceptor Plus will enable researchers around the world to share and analyze huge immunological datasets taken from healthy individuals and sick patients that have been sequenced and stored in databanks in multiple countries.
