Name
Next steps for federated learning and GA4GH: discussion and hackathon (Pt.1)
Date & Time
Wednesday, April 15, 2026, 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Description

Join the GA4GH Cloud Work Stream for a focused session on Federated Learning (FL). FL enables collaborative model training across platforms without sharing raw data, improving privacy and leveraging GA4GH building blocks such as WES, TES, DRS, and Passports and AAI. The session will include a concise overview, a collaborative discussion to prioritise a backlog of follow-up work, and a hackathon to turn one to three high-priority items into prototypes or draft pull requests. Candidate hackathon tasks include an authorisation handoff demo between WES and TES, a compute-and-billing metadata exchange prototype, and a model write-back workflow to DRS with provenance and access control. Expected outcomes are a prioritised action list, potential external collaborators, non-FLWG collaborators, and at least one reproducible artifact or PR or prototype from the hackathon.

Session topic(s)
Cloud, Data Use & Researcher Identities, Data Security, GA4GH Implementation
Session format(s)
Group Discussion: particular topic to gather feedback, perspectives, or ideas, Hackathon: a collaborative programming session
Suggested level of familiarity
Level 2: Have a basic understanding to follow the conversation and contribute thoughtfully