Webinar: Reinventing Bioinformatics: AI-mediated refactoring at scale
October 27, 2026 @ 10:00 – 11:00 CET
Welcome to join us for the Tools for AI/ML research in life sciences event series for our next webinar. We welcome Johan Henriksson (Umeå university and SciLifeLab) to present “Reinventing Bioinformatics: AI-mediated refactoring at scale”.
Date and time: October 27 at 10:00-11:00 Stockholm time (CEST)
Speaker: Johan Henriksson, Umeå university and SciLifeLab
Registration: Please register before October 26, at 18.00 CEST.
Abstract
Bioinformatics and academic Open Source software have always been at mercy of available resources, limiting software quality and what we realistically can produce. However, agentic AI has now drastically reduced the cost of producing sophisticated software.
This talk will be a “call to arms”, showing what can now be done using AI, and aimed to inspire a major refactoring of the academic software ecosystem. I will give examples of (1) How lab software can be written to fit your needs rather than the other way around. (2) How proprietary file formats can be cracked open and how we can push for file format standardization. (3) How to completely remove the need for Conda and containers, and never have a version conflict again. (4) How to make bioinformatics code faster, safer and more ecofriendly. (5) How major commercial software legally can be replaced. (6) How all of this enables the SciLifeLab AI strategy.
Examples will especially be provided in the context of microscopy and image analysis; but also examples beyond imaging, to avoid domain-specific data management solutions.
Tools for AI/ML research in life sciences is an event series by the SciLifeLab Data Centre aimed at life science researchers who use data science and machine learning methods in their work. The goal of the events in this seminar series is to provide introductions to different tools for ML research but also to foster discussions around our practices and how they can be improved. We organise in-person workshops and webinars as part of the event series. The events are open to all researchers in Sweden and beyond, regardless of SciLifeLab affiliation.
Contact: SciLifeLab Data Centre serve@scilifelab.se
datacentre@scilifelab.se
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