Hello World! - Welcome to the Fred Hutch Coop Community blog

3 minute read

Written by: The Coop Team - Fred Hutch Bioinformatics & Data Science Cooperative

Are you a Fred Hutch employee actively involved in data-intensive research? Are you interested in learning more about this type of research? Well, you’ve come to the right place!

The Fred Hutch Bioinformatics & Data Science Cooperative, more commonly known as the Coop, is a community-driven organization of researchers and support staff united by a common interest in data-intensive computation and related technical methods. We build community to share knowledge and accelerate research.

Who is included in our community? We welcome all Fred Hutch and SCCA employees interested in data and computation, from lab managers and faculty to interns and graduate students. Our participants have job titles ranging from lab technician to data analyst, and are engaged in research that may be clinical, laboratory, or exclusively computational. Even if you’re not a Fred Hutch affiliate, we hope you’ll find useful information in our public online materials.

The Coop began in November 2018 to facilitate community building, assess the data and computation needs of our community, and serve as a one-stop shop for information about resources and activities surrounding data-intensive science at Fred Hutch. We work collaboratively with other groups at Fred Hutch supporting such research and keep our webpage public so potential collaborators external to the Hutch can find us. In addition, we support the following programs for our community:

  • Newsletter, email, and listserv: We publish a newsletter each month to keep our community up to date with the latest opportunities. View past newsletters here, and email coophelp at fredhutch.org to get added to our listserv or for answers to general questions.
  • Office hours and community groups: We offer many opportunities for community members to meet to share knowledge and find answers to technical questions. Office hours are staffed throughout the week by employees knowledgeable about Fred Hutch data and computational resources. Community groups provide space for researchers with similar interests in coding or computational methods to share knowledge and skills.
  • Coop Community Slack: Slack is a messaging and discussion application used for collaboration and information sharing. Our Slack workspace includes optional channels for interests ranging from R and Python coding to data visualization.
  • fredhutch.io classes: fredhutch.io is a project aimed at developing educational resources and structured short-form courses about reproducible computational methods. Courses are offered periodically to Fred Hutch and SCCA employees free of charge.
  • Calendars: We maintain event calendars to assist our community in staying up-to-date on opportunities for participation. Check out the ways to access our event information through Google Calendars, Outlook, and CenterNet here.
  • Fred Hutch Biomedical Data Science Wiki: Our Data Science Wiki is a collaborative and curated collection of resources about data generation and scientific computing, created by and for our Fred Hutch research community.

What kind of things will appear in the Coop blog?

We’re planning to use this blog as a way to share more detailed information about our community than is currently accessible through either the newsletter or Slack. In particular, our posts will occupy one or more of the following categories:

  • community: announcements and explanations about Coop events and programs
  • technical: descriptions of tools and approaches used by our data-intensive research community and support staff
  • science: reports on new and interesting research findings from our community using data and computational methods

Do you have a topic you’d like to see featured here? Would you be interested in writing about something you encounter in your day-to-day work at Fred Hutch? Do you have a writing published elsewhere you’d be willing to let us link or cross-post? Feel free to file an issue on GitHub to let us know, or send us an email at coophelp at fredhutch.org.

Thanks for supporting our community, and stay tuned for more information!

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