Highlights from the foundingGIDE Community Event 2026

As coordinator of the foundingGIDE project, Euro-BioImaging was delighted to welcome the global imaging data community to Heidelberg, Germany, on 4-6 May, for the foundingGIDE Community Event 2026. Organised jointly by Euro-BioImaging, Global BioImaging, and EMBL Heidelberg, this milestone gathering brought together more than 140 participants from 30 countries, including researchers, infrastructure providers, industry representatives, funders, and policymakers.

Over the past 2.5 years, foundingGIDE has established a global network of stakeholders committed to advancing imaging data interoperability. The project has fostered international collaboration around standards, metadata and ontologies, while developing sustainable technical solutions to enable interoperability across major image data repositories: BioImage Archive, Image Data Resource and SSBD.

The Community Event provided an opportunity to reflect on these achievements and to discuss the next steps towards a truly global ecosystem for imaging data. Participants explored how coordinated global approaches can improve interoperability between repositories, facilitate cross-disciplinary data reuse, support the development of AI-ready datasets, and ensure the long-term stewardship of valuable imaging data resources.

Across six thematic plenary sessions, speakers and panelists shared perspectives on infrastructure development, community engagement, policy frameworks, metadata standards, and sustainability. The event also featured a poster session showcasing initiatives from across the imaging community. Following the plenary program, participants joined a series of technical events, including workshops and a hackathon where developers, curators, and researchers worked together on ontologies, metadata validation tools, and other practical solutions supporting the GIDE vision. More details about the sessions and the recordings can be found here.

Perhaps the most important outcome of the event was the opportunity to strengthen existing collaborations and create new connections across disciplines, sectors, and geographical regions. Participants highlighted not only the scientific and technical value of the discussions, but also the sense of shared purpose that emerged throughout the week.

An inspiring group of leaders from academic, clinical and industry circles around the world, united in pursuit of a dream, a global ecosystem of data sharing to support the growing needs of research.

- Timothy Olsen, XNAT Works (Source: LinkedIn)

The visit provided valuable insights into global efforts toward interoperable, FAIR, and sustainable bioimaging data ecosystems.

- Arun Sharma, Indian Biological Data Centre, Regional Centre for Biotechnology, India (Source: LinkedIn)

It's clear that decades of effort and innovation by skilled teams across multiple disciplines have lowered the energy barriers for resource-constrained regions to join the open science revolution... The continued and increased visibility, relevance and impact of Latin American science depends on it.

- Christopher Wood, Laboratorio Nacional de Microscopía Avanzada-UNAM, Mexico (Source: LinkedIn)

Inspired by the discussions at foundingGIDE's Community Event, especially seeing the continuity from the previous week's Open Microscopy Environment Community Meeting. In particular we celebrate the successful adoption of OMERO at the national level across Europe. Glencoe is dedicated to contributing to the open-source community to make this piece of the 'GIDE' concept a continued reality.

- Glencoe Software, (Source: LinkedIn)

It was fantastic to see so many people across the BioImaging ecosystem coming together to tackle shared challenges around data, interoperability, and reproducibility. I was also fortunate to take part in the hackathon, where groups were collaborating on ontologies, data curation workflows, and tools for metadata validation.

- Nicholas Condon, The University of Queensland, Australia (Source: LinkedIn)

"Still inspired after the foundingGIDE community event 2026! It was an incredible space to discuss a vital challenge for the future of science: bioimage data management... Each of these events has been an immense source of inspiration, learning, and, above all, human and professional connection at the highest level."

- Nicole Salgado, Universidad de Chile, Chile (Source: LinkedIn)

We’re proud to contribute to these important conversations around interoperable and AI-ready imaging data.

- Zeiss Microscopy (Source: LinkedIn)

Looking Ahead

The foundingGIDE project is approaching its conclusion, but the vision it helped shape continues to grow. Over the last 2.5 years, the project has demonstrated the value of bringing together repositories, imaging infrastructures, researchers, developers, industry partners, and policymakers to address shared challenges in imaging data management and interoperability.

The discussions, collaborations, and technical developments advanced through foundingGIDE have laid important foundations for the Global Image Data Ecosystem. June 2026 will be a particularly important month for the project, the final deliverables summarizing the outcomes and recommendations developed throughout foundingGIDE will be published. Sign up for the foundingGIDE newsletter to be among the first to hear about these deliverables and the next steps for GIDE.

Euro-BioImaging would like to thank all participants, speakers, panelists, poster presenters, workshop organizers, and hackathon contributors for making the Community Event such a success.