DataSHIELD Conference 2025

The DataSHIELD conference is an annual community meeting dedicated to fostering collaboration among researchers, developers, and users of DataSHIELD software. Unlike traditional conferences, this informal, discussion-oriented event provides a unique opportunity for participants to engage in in-depth conversations, networking, and brainstorming future projects in a relaxed and open setting.

The 2025 edition will be hosted by the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics at the University of Lausanne (UniL), Switzerland, as an in-person event. The programme will include a mix of talks, training workshops, demonstrations and discussion sessions relating to the development and use of the DataSHIELD software. Social events in attractive locations will complete the programme.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Opening keynote | Amadou Gaye, PhD Ass. Prof & Chair, Dept. of Integrative Genomics and Epidemiology, Meharry Medical College
Amadou Gaye is a leading expert in genomics and privacy-preserving data analysis in collaborative health research.
🔗 Google Scholar | ORCID

Closing keynote | Ross Stiven Product Manager, Aridhia
Ross Stiven specializes in secure data environments and federated analytics, shaping the future of privacy-preserving research.
🔗 LinkedIn

The primary objectives of the DataSHIELD conference are to:

• Promote cross-collaboration between groups using DataSHIELD,
• Facilitate networking and discussions on upcoming projects, collaborations, and software developments,
• Offer an in-person space for community-driven exchanges, free from the constraints of formal presentations.

Whether you're a longtime DataSHIELD user or new to the community, this is the perfect opportunity to connect, share insights, and help shape the future of privacy-preserving data analysis.

This conference is designed for anyone interested in using, applying, or advancing DataSHIELD, including:

• Newcomers exploring DataSHIELD for the first time or considering novel applications,
• Current users applying DataSHIELD in research and practice,
• Developers working on new statistical methodologies, functionalities, or infrastructure.

DATASHIELD TRAINING WORKSHOPS Registration fee 60 CHF/participant (40 CHF/PhD student & student)

Tuesday, September 23, 11:30-16:30

Join our hands-on training workshops designed to help participants deepen their understanding of DataSHIELD:

• DataSHIELD introductory lecture for workshop attendees
• DataSHIELD beginners/analysis: This workshop is aimed at researchers who will be conducting analysis using DataSHIELD. By working through examples, you will learn the key elements of conducting analysis with DataSHIELD. This will include logging in and managing a DataSHIELD session, viewing meta-data, data manipulation, returning summary statistics, running 1-stage and 2-stage regression models, making plots and exporting results.
  
• Installing DataSHIELD - setting up the infrastructure: Curious about setting up secure, federated data analysis with DataSHIELD? In this workshop, you’ll be seeing how to install and configure Armadillo or Opal - the open-source backend for DataSHIELD - from scratch. Whether you're hosting your own data or preparing nodes for a collaboration, this session will walk you through all the essentials. The workshop will contain basic system administration, terminal utils to configure from a ssh session (great for cloud environments!), some basic linux stuff and hopefully a little bit of monitoring strategies.

These workshops are optional and open to all skill levels. Please note that the workshops take place in parallel, so each conference participant can only attend one of them. If you are in doubt which of them might be the right choice for your expectations, please feel free to contact us for advice.

DATASHIELD MAIN CONFERENCE Registration fee 350 CHF/participant (250 CHF/PhD student & student)

Program

Tuesday, September 23

• 10:30-11:30 – Registration for workshop attendees (near room MAX-414)
• 11:30-12:30 – Tim Cadman (University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands): DataSHIELD introductory lecture for workshop attendees (MAX-414)
• 12:30-13:30 – Lunch
• 13:30-16:30 – Parallel workshops (optional):
  • 1. DataSHIELD beginners/analysis (15:00 coffee/tea)
    Facilitators: Tim Cadman; Andrei Morgan (INSERM, France); Demetris Avraam (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) (POL-342)
  • 2. Installing DataSHIELD - setting up the infrastructure (15:00 coffee/tea)
    Facilitators: Xavier Montagut (Big Omics, Switzerland); Dick Postma (University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands) (POL-338)
• 16:00-18:00 – Registration (near MAX-414)
• 18:00-18:30 – Welcome: Andrei Morgan; Marie Dangles (SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Switzerland); Mark Ibberson (SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Switzerland) (MAX-414)
• 18:30-20:00 – Networking reception (MAX-414)

Wednesday, September 24 (MAX-414)

• 09:00-09:30 – Registration
• 09:30-09:35 – Welcome: Becca Wilson (University of Liverpool, UK)
• 09:35-10:30 – Keynote talk 1: Amadou Gaye (Meharry Medical College, USA): Integrative genomics and epidemiology in DataSHIELD Chair: Becca Wilson
• 10:30-11:00 – Coffee/tea break
• 11:00-12:30 – Session 1: Routine collected healthcare data Chair: Juan R. Gonzalez (ISGlobal, Spain)
  • Paul Burton (Newcastle University, UK): Incorporating encryption into DataSHIELD
  • Aashna Uppal (University of Oxford, UK): Consensus building for data collection standards in clinical snakebite envenoming research
  • Dale Kirkwood (Lancashire and South Cumbria National Health Service Secure Data Environment, UK): It takes a village: Enhancing scientific communications and public engagement for trusted, transparent federated analytics
  • Juan R. Gonzalez: Field Experience in Africa: Training and Setting Up Opal & DataSHIELD Infrastructures
• 12:30-14:00 – Lunch
• 14:00-15:10 – Session 2: Standards and harmonization Chair: Andrei Morgan
  • Alexander Kanitz (Pacific Analytics Consulting, Australia): Deploying a production-grade, standardised DataSHIELD infrastructure for the ProPASS multi-cohort project
  • Becca Wilson: Logging DataSHIELD analytic provenance with the Five Safes Research Objects standard
  • Florian Schwarz (German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Germany): Towards establishing reusable harmonisation procedures for distributed data analysis: An NFDI4Health approach
• 15:10-15:40 – Coffee/tea break
• 15:40-16:40 – Session 3: Compute and infrastructure Chair: Stuart Wheater (Arjuna Technologies, UK)
  • David Sarrat Gonzalez (ISGlobal, Spain): dsHPC: Enabling High-Performance Computing in DataSHIELD
  • Yannick Marcon (Epigeny, France): DataSHIELD and Kubernetes: On-demand R servers with Opal
  • Tim Cadman; Yannick Marcon: Infrastructure updates
  • Mariska Slofstra (University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands): Molgenis Armadillo
• 16:40-18:00 – Open discussion / Breakouts
• 18:15 – Meeting in front of MAX-414, to go to bus stop Avenue Forel, for bus to Chexbres for conference dinner
• 19:00-22:30 – Conference dinner - Hotel Prealpina, Chexbres, with stunning view of the Lac Lemand

Thursday, September 25 (MAX-414)

• 09:00-10:30 – Session 4: DataSHIELD method development/software demos Chair: Demetris Avraam
  • Annika Swenne (Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology, Germany): Federated generalized additive models for location, scale and shape for pooled analysis with DataSHIELD: implementation and practical considerations
  • Iulian Dragan (SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Switzerland): dsWrappeR - towards plug-and-play R packages in DataSHIELD: A semi-automated approach
  • Andreas Mändle (Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology, Germany): Privacy-preserving synthetic data generation in DataSHIELD using partition-of-unity copulas
  • Demetris Avraam: Secure and privacy-preserving data integration for cohort and survey data
• 10:30-11:00 – Coffee/tea break
• 11:00-12:30 – Session 5: Panel Discussion: Could DataSHIELD help increase the accessibility of routinely collected healthcare data and what are the technical/research, ethico-legal and societal factors that need to be considered to ensure this is done responsibly? Panellists: Bodil Svennblad (Uppsala University, Sweden); Alexander Bernier (University of Toronto, Canada); Terry Lock (public advisor on the DataSHIELD Advisory Board, UK); Dale Kirkwood; Chair: Angela Pinot de Moira (Imperial College London, UK)
• 12:30-14:00 – Lunch
• 14:00-15:30 – Session 6: Short updates from the DataSHIELD community Chair: Andrei Morgan
• 15:30-16:00 – Coffee/tea break
• 16:00-16:45 – Session 7: Longitudinal studies 1 Chair: Tim Cadman
  • Bodil Svennblad: Implementation of the g-formula for federated individual patient data
  • Andrei Morgan: Are there survival differences according to sex in extremely preterm populations? A federated data analysis of European cohort and Nordic registry data from 1967-2016
• 16:45-17:30 – Open discussion / Breakouts / Networking

Friday, September 26 (POL-319)

• 09:00-09:45 – Session 8: Longitudinal studies 2 Chair: Florian Schwarz
  • Nadja Lendle (Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology, Germany): Challenges in emulating a target trial with time-to-event outcome in DataSHIELD: A case study evaluating screening colonoscopy
  • Vittorio Paolo Illiano (Hoffmann-La Roche, Switzerland): Privacy-preserving time-to-event analysis of disease modifying treatment (DMT) persistence in people living with multiple sclerosis using WebDisco on DataSHIELD
• 09:45-10:15 – Session 9: Lightning talks Chair: Florian Schwarz
  • Hammam Abu Attieh (Berlin Institute of Health, Germany): Setting up a DataSHIELD hub for the German Medical Informatics Initiative: Challenges and lessons learned
  • Simone Avesani (University of Verona, Italy): Tackling multi drug resistance in rheumatoid arthritis through DataSHIELD federated system: The MDR-RA Initiative
  • Amit Katiyar (All India Institute of Medical Sciences, India): Promoter variant-mediated regulation in lung cancer: Insights from multi-omic TCGA cohorts
  • Rahul Sharma (All India Institute of Medical Sciences, India): Enhancing prognostic assessment of minimal residual disease in adult B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia using machine learning and deep learning on flow cytometry data
  • Carolina Alvarez (University of Bonn, Germany): Federated Hidden Markov Models for HALTA Long Covid
• 10:15-11:00 – Coffee/tea break
• 11:00-12:00 – Keynote talk 2: Industry talk - Ross Stiven (Aridhia Informatics, UK): Federated Trusted Research Environments (TREs) Chair: Becca Wilson
• 12:00-12:15 – Closing remarks: Becca Wilson; Andrei Morgan; Mark Ibberson
• 12:15 – Departure, Lunch to go

Further information:

• Rooms POL-338 and POL-342 can be used for breakout meetings from Wednesday to Thursday and room POL-340.1 can be used on Friday.
• Wi-Fi access will be available during the conference (details TBA).

Contact & organization

Host organization (SIB) The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is responsible for conference registration, event logistics, abstract submissions, and overall programme coordination. For inquiries, please contact:

• Mark Ibberson
• Etienne de Rham
• Manuela Pruess
• Muriel Metrailler