Partnerships across Aotearoa's research landscape

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Each year NeSI publishes an Annual Review to celebrate the work we do,

the people we work with, and the groundwork we're laying for future directions. 

Below is an excerpt from our 2023 Annual Review. 

 

Throughout 2023 and into 2024, we’ve been looking aspirationally at developing our national eResearch platform to further the performance and outcomes of Aotearoa’s digitally-dynamic research sector.

Partnerships across the research landscape

The Rakeiora Pathfinder project remained a key partnership for our team in 2023. The extent of the partnering and co-design cannot be understated and forms the underpinnings of that project’s success. The work is seen as an exemplar of what the research data space needs to look like and highlights the level of partnership needed to get there.

Relationships built through Rakeiora also led to NeSI participating in Indigidata Aotearoa in August 2023 to build capability amongst Māori in Māori data science, Māori data sovereignty, Māori data ethics, and Māori data applications. This inaugural wānanga was the result of collaborative effort by Te Kotahi Research Institute alongside Genomics Aotearoa, NeSI, REANNZ, Time-evolving Data Science and Artificial Intelligence for Advanced Open Environmental Science (TAIAO), and the Tikanga in Technology research program.

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Participants and speakers from the inaugural Indigidata Aotearoa event in 2023, aimed at advancing Indigenous data science and sovereignty.

Since its establishment in 2017, Genomics Aotearoa has been a key partner for NeSI. This has been an opportunity to provide comprehensive support across all of NeSI’s services to the national genomics community across precision health, ecology, and primary industry. 

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NeSI’s training partnership with Genomics Aotearoa continued to thrive in 2023, supporting genomics researchers
developing their Machine Learning and image analysis skills.

NeSI wrapped up the year co-facilitating the Metagenomics Summer School with Genomics Aotearoa and the University of Auckland. This annual event focuses on assisting researchers in navigating the analysis of metagenomic sequence data, encompassing metagenomic read sequences, curated metagenome-assembled genomes, as well as downstream data analyses and visualization in R. 

Genomics Aotearoa’s activity on NeSI has evolved over time, as shown below in the graph of usage by resource type over the last five years.

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The graph above displays Genomics Aotearoa's activity on NeSI's HPC platform measured in Compute Units, which is a unit we use internally to capture and visualise the consumption of memory, alongside CPU core hours and GPU hours.

Since 2020 NeSI has partnered with the Antarctic Science Platform (ASP), who support a range of physical and biological science to understand Antarctica’s impact on the global earth system and New Zealand. Together we’re building a shared national perspective of the research ecosystem, working to enrich and develop our collective capabilities, and maintain open kōrero.

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NeSI and ASP team members pictured above (l to r, clockwise): Georgina Rae and Nick Jones (NeSI), and Nancy Bertler and Nicholas Golledge (ASP).

During this time we have seen ASP researchers’ usage grow and evolve across NeSI’s compute and storage services. When our existing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) came to the end of its term in 2023, both parties were keen to extend it to align with the ASP investment term.

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Nurturing partnerships in capability-building

NeSI partnered with Genomics Aotearoa and members of the Human Pangenome Reference Group (HPRC) from the United States to deliver an innovative Long Read Assembly workshop for genomics researchers in Aotearoa. Research work in pangenome enables a more comprehensive depiction of genetic diversity, enhancing the representation of population-specific genetic variations. Crucially, it encompasses variations across the entire genome, making it a far more inclusive reflection of genetic distinctions present in diverse global populations. It marks a significant step forward for New Zealand towards more equitable scientific approaches.

Throughout 2023, NeSI also hosted virtual Carpentries community calls in collaboration with the ARDC. These gatherings bolstered collaboration between the Carpentries and training affiliates across the trans-Tasman region. The Carpentries marked its 25th Anniversary in 2023 and NeSI participated in global celebrations, joining a regional panel discussion and sharing reflections on the growth, contributions and impact of The Carpentries in our region. NeSI was among the first member organisations from Australasia to join in 2015, and the first in the region to pioneer a national approach.

These are just some of the many partnerships and activities that kept us busy in 2023.
Click here to read more from our 2023 Annual Review.

If you'd like to receive a printed copy of our review, get in touch.