Read about how the KBase community has kicked off 2022!
Apr 12, 2022

Quarterly User Update (January – March 2022)

Welcome to the first Quarterly KBase User update of 2022. Learn about what the community has been up to over the first 3 months of the year.

Community Highlight

To kick off the year, KBase has worked with members of the community to meet and talk about data science – both virtually and in-person. 

KBase began 2022 with a virtual meetup for the Bay Area Bioinformatics Forum (BayBIFX) in January where we demonstrated how to create an analysis workflow in KBase for the community and discussed future goals for the platform.

We supported community developers and researchers within our User Working Groups that presented their research and contributions to the platform during the U.S. Department of Energy Genomic Science program Annual Principal Investigator Meeting.

And we attended our first in-person meeting in two years at the Microbiome Centers Consortium (MCC) Directors Meeting at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois at the end of March! The MCC brought together representatives of microbiome centers across the United States to discuss the current challenges for microbiome science and how to approach these challenges through multiple disciplines by developing general principles, tools, and human resources.

If you think your work in KBase could become a Community Highlight, please reach out at engage@kbase.us.

Publications Using KBase

KBase was used in various methods across 27 publications this quarter, with studies based in hot springs from Yellowstone National Park to the Himalayas (Saini et al. 2022, Sharma et al. 2022) and domestic cases of bacterium transmission (Rodríguez-Pallares et al. 2022). You can explore all the publications using KBase at: https://www.kbase.us/research.

If you used KBase for your research, and we are missing your publication, please let us know at engage@kbase.us!

We want to work with you to better support citation metrics for your work in KBase and are piloting a “Publishing with KBase” project. Please contact us if you are preparing a manuscript for publication!!!

New Webinars

The first quarter of 2022 was focused on supporting users and the release of new functionality on the platform. Webinars included updates to the “Intro to KBase” and “Publishing Data and Narratives in KBase.” 

During March, the team introduced the Bulk Import feature and demonstrated how to import multiple data objects into a Narrative with one App run. There is also a News feature covering how to use the Bulk Importer App and an accompanying tutorial video. All webinars are available on the KBase YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/doekbase or through https://www.kbase.us/learn/.

Summary

And finally, to close out our update, here is a summary of our user numbers to date. Keep doing great science in KBase. The KBase team is here to support you!

 

Overview graphic of social media, platform growth and use, and publications from Q1 2022

Ellen Dow
Ellen Dow
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Ellen G. Dow, Ph.D. is a member of the outreach, communications, and user development team. Inspired by involvement in science outreach throughout graduate school, she left the bench to gain experience in informal education and cultivate community engagement from the general public to science sectors. A molecular biologist by training, Ellen applies her research experience to support scientists and develop resources for the KBase community.

Elisha Wood-Charlson
Elisha Wood-Charlson | Engagement Lead
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Elisha M Wood-Charlson is KBase’s User Engagement Lead. She has a PhD and 10+ years of experience as a microbial ecologist focused on host-microbe-virus interactions in the marine environment. Since leaving the research bench, she has moved into the realm of scientific community engagement, with the goal of making microbiome data science more efficient through effective collaboration, building trust in online communities, and developing shared ownership throughout the scientific process.