In June, we were enormously pleased to meet face-to-face for the first hybrid General Meeting in three years; it was wonderful to get the community together in Vienna and online. In addition to seeing old friends and forging new collaborations, the meeting drove forward the creation of roadmaps for the Bionetworks which are helping to map a path towards the first draft of the HCA.
We hope you will enjoy this newsletter which highlights the great community spirit, events and news from HCA members.
HCA community reconvenes at the 2022 General Meeting
The Human Cell Atlas community came together for a wonderful three days at the hybrid annual HCA General Meeting in June held in Vienna, Austria and online. The meeting focused on progress to date, the bionetworks and preparing for atlas integration. Attendees from 53 countries included 221 in-person and 654 virtual participants.
The HCA Latin America network holds second Symposium
The Human Cell Atlas Latin America Symposium was held virtually on 6-7 October 2022. It brought together Latin American scientists and researchers worldwide to discuss and share research on single-cell technologies and expand the network. About 170 participants from 22 countries joined the talks and discussion rooms. Videos will be available soon on HCA YouTube [humancellatlas.us19.list-manage.com] and Bilibili [humancellatlas.us19.list-manage.com].
The Data Coordination Platform (DCP) team is collaborating with atlas builders from the different HCA Biological Networks to bring all the raw data and matrices together into the Data Portal.
Please help the HCA community build an atlas by contacting the DCP wrangler team and submitting your data. This can include raw sequencing data, CELLxGENE matrices and cell type annotation. Matrices produced from managed-access datasets are also encouraged.
The wrangler team can also help format and standardize metadata and make matrices accessible from other portals like CELLxGENE and UCSC Cell Browser.
To date, the Data Coordination Platform [humancellatlas.us19.list-manage.com] (DCP) hosts data from an estimated 30.6 million cells. Since May 2022, the DCP has added 4.3 million cells (30.6 million total), 27 projects (288 total), 1,200 donors (4,500 total), and 1,900 samples (13,300 total).
HCA is hosting virtual workshops to introduce Single-Cell RNA-Seq Analysis tools and techniques to researchers based in Africa, thanks to support by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The first HCA Africa Workshop took place on 17 – 20 October. Due to great demand, the Workshop will be re-run on 14 – 17 November 2022. Both workshops are fully booked with 160 people participating from 16 African countries. Additional workshops are being planned in Africa and elsewhere.
HCA Asia Meeting, Bangkok, 3 - 4 November, 2022 (hybrid)
The hybrid HCA Asia Meeting 2022 will be held on 3 - 4 November, in-person in Bangkok, Thailand and online. The meeting will bring researchers together to share updates and insights, to broaden representation of communities across the Asia-Pacific region, and to enhance scientific impact in the region and across the globe.
The second HCA Developmental and Pediatric Cell Atlas Meeting will take place on 20 – 22 November in Paris, France and online. Bringing together the Developmental and Pediatric Cell Atlas community, the meeting will share updates and insights on implementing the proposed strategies outlined in the HCA Developmental roadmap [humancellatlas.us19.list-manage.com].
The Human Cell Atlas consortium is an Affiliate Member of Scholars at Risk, a US-based non-governmental organization that protects scholars facing grave threats to their lives, liberty, and well-being, in part by arranging short-term (typically one-year) positions of sanctuary at institutions in its network. HCA members who are potentially interested in hosting an at-risk scholar can register their interest athttps://www.humancellatlas.org/scholars-at-risk/ [humancellatlas.us19.list-manage.com] . No commitment is necessary to join the registry.
HCA Townhall events
Join us for the virtual HCA Townhall events organised for 6 December 2022 and 26 April 2023, where we will be celebrating our progress to date and discuss plans for building Atlas 1.0. Everyone welcome!
New Member of the HCA Executive Office
HCA Archivist - Ayah Al-Rawni
Ayah has joined the HCA administrative team in the UK as Archivist. She will capture and preserve materials about HCA’s history, collaborative research activities and scientific achievements, to ensure that they are accessible and usable in the future. The archive will be a valuable information resource. Ayah is also working on implementing HCA information governance policies.
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