Pre-conference events

TipRegistration is open

Each event spans two days. Participants should register for either the workshop or the hackathon.

Register for
- Workshop
- Hackathon

Registration closes on Sunday, May 3, or earlier if capacity is reached.

Fees

Type Fee
Workshop (includes lunches) €100
Hackathon free
NoteWorkshop fee

If you are unable to pay the fee, you may request to be added to a waiting list in case funding becomes available. Please note that places will be filled on a first‑come, first‑served basis by paying participants. If all places fill before funding becomes available, we may not be able to offer you a spot.

Event descriptions

Before the conference, on Monday and Tuesday, 1–2 June, the Bioconductor Training Committee, in collaboration with the University of Turku, CompLifeSci, and the Finnish Society for Bioinformatics, will organize the following two-day pre-conference events:

  1. Workshop: Orchestrating Microbiome Analysis with Bioconductor
  2. Hackathon

1. Orchestrating Microbiome Analysis with Bioconductor

This is a Bioconductor Carpentries workshop, combining the Carpentries’ hands-on, interactive teaching approach with Bioconductor-specific materials.

Over 2 days, participants will learn how to:

  • Import, process, and analyze microbiome datasets
  • Explore diversity patterns
  • Perform differential abundance analyses
  • Integrate multi-omics data

The course combines lectures with practical exercises to give participants the skills and confidence to run common microbiome analysis workflows independently using freely available resources.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with R and Bioconductor

Instructors: Leo Lahti, Himel Mallick and Tuomas Borman

What is a Bioconductor Carpentry Workshop

The Carpentries is a global community focused on teaching foundational coding and data science skills to researchers. The core of this community are Carpentries Instructors, who work together to grow their instructional and technical skills. Bioconductor is a member of The Carpentries, supporting community members to earn Carpentries instructor certification, develop Bioconductor-specific training materials, and teach Carpentry workshops on those materials.

A Bioconductor Carpentry Workshop is a course on how to use Bioconductor packages and workflows, led by Carpentry-certified instructors on materials developed by the Bioconductor community.

2. Hackathon

A bioconductor-centric hackathon will be held in the two days before EuroBioc2026. Currently proposed topics include:

  • An R package for CUDA API bindings, to facilitate development and access to CUDA natively in R, package name TBD
  • A tool for building minimal, lightweight containers for bioconductor packages on the fly, from the package dependency graph
  • A package or function for converting R scripts into commandline executables, with an emphasis on robust and reliable deployment
  • A tidy / spatial -omics project, TBD

Participants are welcome to bring or propose their own topics as well. Support for general bug hunting or feature additions in existing packages that are willing to accept pull requests will also be supported.

Bioconductor is a mature, diverse, and well-maintained project with many different ways to contribute. Participants from all career stages and technical backgrounds are welcome, with the only requirements being a willingness to learn and work well in a collaborative environment.

We will be in contact about a month before the conference to confirm participation, plan out teams for projects, and ensure any questions or concerns are addressed.

Hackathon goals can vary widely depending on project complexity, but in general working and tested R packages are the goal where applicable. Tangible contributions to repositories that can be clearly professionally communicated will be the goal otherwise.

Venue and requirements

Both pre-conference events will take place at the EuroBioC2026 venue.
Participants are expected to bring a laptop. The rooms will provide:

  • Electrical outlets for laptops
  • Wireless internet (Eduroam WiFi available)

Questions?

If you have any questions about the pre-conference workshop or hackathon, do not hesitate to contact the organizers at eurobioc@bioconductor.org.