National Facility for Data Handling & Analysis

The mission of the National Facility for Data Handling and Analysis is to support the national research community by providing state-of-the-art first pass analysis of the data generated by the other National Facilities and deliver the data to the external project owner. The main objective of this National Facility is to provide the bioinformatics and bioimage analysis expertise in the analysis of complex, large-scale biomedical datasets.

The National Facility for Data Handling and Analysis foresees three Infrastructural Units:

  • INFRASTRUCTURAL UNIT 1 Bioimage Analysis
  • INFRASTRUCTURAL UNIT 2 Omics Analysis
  • INFRASTRUCTURAL UNIT 3 Technology Development – DevOps and Web Development

The NoBIAS unitl provides high-quality image analysis solutions, including Quality Control (QC), de-noising and image restoration, segmentation, and basic quantification for imaging data.

The NOAS unit performs  the analysis of ‘omics data generated by other Facilities and  including QC, alignment to reference, as well as calculations of read counts and/or variant calling.

The DevOps/WebDev unit focuses on providing installable and containerised versions of the facility workflows, as well as creating user-friendly WebApps for navigating the status of the analyses and for data transfer.

As a whole, the National Facility for Data Handling and Analysis engages in technology development, i.e. in creating re-usable research software for use within the Facility, but also to enable the deployment of certain novel components that users will be able to “take home” to their own institutions. Technology development ensures that the Facility remains state-of-the-art and adapts organically to the needs of the research community.

Another main pillar of the Facility is the provision of training for the users and promo creating national awareness of our service portfolio, teaching fundamental courses, and preparing our users to take the taught knowledge back to their home institutions.

The National Facility for Data Handling and Analysis is supported by a large Data Centre and Scientific Computing infrastructure initially composed of an HPC system with approximate 90 computing nodes, 30 GPU nodes, 3-4 PB scratch space and 15 PB total storage space.

Facility members