EGI Supports Euro-BioImaging's Innovative Distributed Training Course

Euro-BioImaging and several of its Nodes, as part of the EU project eRImote, recently held an "Introduction to Image Analysis with Python" course across three sites: the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), Institut Pasteur (France), and the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (Portugal). EGI’s Training Infrastructure was used to deploy BAND, a remote desktop application platform, allowing participants to gain hands-on experience with bioimage analysis without needing extensive travel, thus reducing costs and environmental impact.

“With this collaboration between EGI and Euro-BioImaging, we have validated that the EGI Infrastructure is fit for purpose to enable distributed, online training for image analysis at international scale.” Sebastian Luna-Valero, Cloud Community Support Specialist at EGI

Thanks to EGI’s resources, provided by CESNET, the BAND remote desktop offered a unified learning environment, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange across sites. The course was in high demand, attracting PhD students, imaging scientists, and facility staff from across Europe. This distributed format allowed local trainers to focus on one day of the curriculum, streamlining logistics and enhancing the learning experience.

“The support and resources provided by EGI and CESNET were invaluable for this course. Having BAND accessible for all students in the different countries with the required compute power made it possible to develop a unified training experience across the distributed training sites. The support from the EGI and CESNET team for deploying BAND on the infrastructure was excellent.” Johanna Bischof, Head of Bio-Hub Operations at Euro-BioImaging

Feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive, with many noting the course's value for their research. Euro-BioImaging plans to expand this training model, continuing to advance bioimage analysis skills in the European research community.

Read the full report on the Euro-BioImaging website.