12 October 2026
GDI partners gather in Dublin
The European Genomic Data Infrastructure (GDI) project held its final General Assembly in Dublin in early October, in person and online, during Ireland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union. GDI is the backbone of the 1+ Million Genomes (1+MG) initiative, building a federated, cross-border network of national genome collections for research and healthcare. The General Assembly was organised by the GDI project.
National deployment and connectivity demonstrated
Partners reflected on the achievements of the past year and discussed plans for the remainder of the project. The 1+MG infrastructure deployment pillar demonstrated national deployment and connectivity, using examples of Genome of Europe data, cancer use case data and synthetic data. Each GDI node country then presented its progress towards connecting to the GDI user portal and its aims to March 2027.
With five months remaining, the project is focused on delivering its final outcomes and advancing the European Genomic Data Infrastructure.
Ireland in GDI
Ireland takes part through GDI Ireland, the Irish arm of the project, co-led by RCSI and University College Dublin (UCD) in partnership with the University of Limerick (UL) and Maynooth University. Its core management team spans all four institutions and overlaps closely with ELIXIR Ireland:
RCSI
- Gianpiero Cavalleri, GDI Ireland co-lead: sustainability and public genome sequencing project ELIXIR Ireland Management Board
- Laura Whelan, sustainability and public genome sequencing project ELIXIR Ireland Deputy Head of Node
- Creina Slator, programme manager
University College Dublin (UCD)
- Denis Shields, GDI Ireland co-lead: education and training ELIXIR Ireland Management Board
University of Limerick (UL)
- Aedín Culhane, technical implementation lead ELIXIR Ireland Head of Node
- Alex Mahmoud, research software engineer, technical implementation
- Abhishek Nayak, PhD researcher, technical implementation
Maynooth University
- Markus Helfert, data governance lead
- Denise Manton, data governance
Together they connect national work on sensitive genomic data with ELIXIR Ireland's wider role in federated human data.
The General Assembly took place in the same week as the ELIXIR Federated Human Data Community meeting at Trinity College Dublin. Read our story: ELIXIR Federated Human Data Community meets in Dublin.
