Galaxy Community Conference 2015 - Norwich (4-8 July)

The 2015 Galaxy Community Conference (GCC2015, http://gcc2015.tsl.ac.uk/)
is being held at the Sainsbury Lab in Norwich, United Kingdom, 4-8 July.
GCC2015 is an opportunity to meet with 200+ others working at the forefront
data-intensive biomedical research. The 2015 edition of GCC includes more
than ever before (http://gcc2015.tsl.ac.uk/programme/):
 
- Coding and Data Wrangling Hackathons (and a colocated BioJS Hackathon
too)
- Two days of training offering 18 sessions on 15 topics in up to 5
parallel tracks, covering topics ranging from analysis to administration to
tool development.
- A two day meeting featuring accepted talks, poster presentations,
keynote talks, vendor exhibits, lightning talks, birds-of-a-feather
meetups, and plenty of networking.
 
Early registration is now open (but closes Friday, 22 May, *which is this
Friday)*. Registering early saves you 40%. Registering now ensures you'll
get a spot in the hackathon and training sessions of your choice.
 
Galaxy is a data integration and analysis platform for the life sciences.
It is an open source project and is available for free on the web, for
local, and installs, and on cloud infrastructures. It is deployed around
the world, and used for research across the tree of life. See
http://galaxyproject.org/ for more.
 
Finally, there are also many other events going on before and after
GCC2015, and GCC itself ends right before ISMB / ECCB starts in Dublin.
See https://wiki.galaxyproject.org/News/NearGCC2015 for a complete list.
 
Hope to see you in Norwich!
 
Dave Clements, on behalf of the GCC2015 Organising Committee
 

CANSat competition

ESA wishes to foster and support a broad range of CanSat activities across its Member States, in order to give European students their first experience of a real space-related project. 

ESERO-UK organises an annual UK CanSat Competition, the winner of which goes on to compete in the European CanSat Competition.

A CanSat is a simulation of a real satellite, integrated within the volume and shape of a soft drink can. The challenge for the students is to fit all the major subsystems found in a satellite, such as power, sensors and a communication system, into this minimal volume. The CanSat is then launched to an altitude of a few hundred metres by a rocket or dropped from a platform or captive balloon and its mission begins: to carry out a scientific experiment and achieve a safe landing.

CanSats offer a unique opportunity for students to have a first practical experience of a real space project. They are responsible for all aspects: selecting the mission objectives, designing the CanSat, integrating the components, testing, preparing for launch and then analysing the data.

Competition overview

The UK CanSat Competition consists of four phases:

1. Call for proposals and team selection
2. Teachers’ introductory workshop
3. CanSat construction and test activities
4. Competition launch campaign

More here