Modern life sciences are facing a rapidly increasing amount of data produced worldwide. The diversity and heterogeneity of the data calls for standardized formats for the data itself, its description and its context (the metadata), as well as for the processes during generation and processing of the data, the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Standardization is important to enable researchers to exchange and integrate the data and resulting models and to relate corresponding data to each other. The rapid development of modern technologies, especially the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies, allows the generation of biological data with increasing speed and precision. Standards and SOPs, therefore, become an increasingly critical issue specifically in large scale, distributed or applied approaches assuring that data can be accessed, integrated, shared, and compared. The development of quality control and standards are key drivers for efficient and successful large-scale research pipelines in the life sciences. The workshop will bring together experimentalists and modellers, as well as representatives from national and international standardization bodies and data management experts. It will include discussions of the current state of standardization in the different fields of the life sciences. The aim is to identify overlaps, possible interoperability and interfacing options between the corresponding standards.

Program Workshop SeqAhead Setting the standards for analysing and integrating big data Wednesday, July 9, 2014

09:30-10:00 Welcome and Introduction 10:00-11:15 Session 1: Data Generation 11:15-11:45 Coffee Break 11:45-13:00 Session 2: Data Standards 13:00-14:00 Lunch 14:00-15:30 Session 3: Data Integration 15:30-16:00 Coffee Break 16:30-18:00 Session 4: Data Processing 18:00-18:30 Discussion and formation of groups for breakout sessions

Get together Thursday, July 10, 2014 09:00-10:30 Breakout sessions 10:30-11:00 Coffee Break 11:00-13:30 Presentations of the results & Discussion of a roadmap Closing remarks Tutorial AllBio New methods in genome annotation Hands-on training in new computational methods in next generation sequencing and genome annotation 15:00 - 18:00 Lectures Friday, July 11, 2014 09:00 - 17:00 Hands on training*  genome annotation automatic pipelines  specific metabolic pathways gene discovery  co-expression correlation network construction *please bring your own laptop with