Looking back at foundingGIDE: 2.5 years of collaboration
After 2.5 years of collaboration, innovation, and community building, the foundingGIDE project has officially come to an end. While the project itself concludes, the work it has enabled will continue to support the global imaging community for years to come.
As we mark the end of the project, we take the opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved, celebrate the community that made it possible, and highlight the resources that will continue to benefit researchers worldwide.
Launched with the ambition of laying the foundations for a Global Image Data Ecosystem (GIDE), foundingGIDE brought together experts from research infrastructures, imaging facilities, data repositories, and scientific communities to address one of the biggest challenges in biological and biomedical imaging: enhance the interoperability of biological and preclinical image data. Launched in January 2024 with the support of Horizon Europe and coordinated by Euro-BioImaging ERIC, this ambitious Coordination and Support Action (CSA) brought together core partners from Europe, Australia, and Japan to bridge the gaps in global imaging data sharing. The project partners are: Euro-BioImaging ERIC, EMBL-EBI, CNR, German BioImaging, Global BioImaging, RIKEN, National Imaging Facility, Microscopy Australia.
Bringing the global image data community together
From the very beginning, foundingGIDE recognized that technical solutions alone are not enough to achieve interoperability. Building a truly connected image data ecosystem requires collaboration across communities, disciplines, and continents. Over the course of the project, foundingGIDE engaged researchers, data experts, facility staff, research infrastructures, repository developers, policy makers, funders, and standards organizations through community events, technical workshops, hackathons, conference sessions, and international collaborations.
Together, these activities created opportunities to exchange experiences, identify common challenges, and work towards shared solutions for FAIR and interoperable image data.
To foster this collaboration, foundingGIDE organized a series of international Community Events that became the cornerstone of the project’s engagement strategy. Hosted across three continents in Japan (2024), Australia (2025), and Germany (2026), these events brought together the global imaging community to discuss common challenges, exchange expertise, and build consensus on the future of biological and preclinical image data interoperability.
Each event built on the outcomes of the previous one. The first Community Event in Okazaki, Japan, established a common understanding of the challenges surrounding metadata, ontologies, and image data reuse, and initiated new international collaborations. The second event in Brisbane, Australia, shifted the focus towards developing shared solutions, bringing together diverse communities to explore practical approaches for improving interoperability. Finally, the concluding Community Event in Heidelberg, Germany, celebrated the project’s achievements while looking ahead, bringing together researchers, technology developers, infrastructure providers, funders, and policy makers to discuss the long-term sustainability of a global image data ecosystem.
The Community Events were complemented by technical workshops and hackathons, (2024 in Kobe, Japan and 2026 in Heidelberg, Germany), providing opportunities for participants to move beyond high-level conversations and collaborate on practical solutions. These activities helped strengthen international partnerships, refine technical outputs, and ensure that the project’s recommendations reflected the needs and perspectives of the wider community.
Advancing image data interoperability
A central objective of foundingGIDE was to improve interoperability across biological and preclinical image data. Throughout the project, partners worked together to assess existing metadata standards and ontologies, identify gaps, develop recommendations, and demonstrate practical approaches for harmonizing image metadata across repositories.
Among the project’s technical achievements is the GIDE stack represented by:
- Metadata schema for
- Ontology recommendation for
- Tools
- Indexing and Search API: D10.1, D11.1
- Search Portals: Reference search portal, Euro-BioImaging Web Portal, D11.1, D1.7
- Preclinical Tools: D12.1
Together, these outputs provide practical guidance and reusable resources for the wider imaging community. More on the GIDE stack can be found here.
Supporting policy and long-term sustainability
Beyond technical developments, foundingGIDE actively contributed to discussions on the future of image data management and interoperability. The project engaged with research infrastructures, policy makers, and international initiatives to explore how data sharing, FAIR practices, and interoperability can become embedded within research services and scientific workflows. The resulting recommendations and guiding discussions provide a roadmap for strengthening image data ecosystems and encouraging sustainable data sharing practices beyond the lifetime of the project.
Celebrating our final project outputs
As the project concludes, we are pleased to release the final set of foundingGIDE deliverables. The project deliverables are all available on Zenodo:
D1.1 – Report on project management procedures and the establishment of the consortium bodies
D1.2 – Data Management Plan
D1.3 – Communication and Outreach strategy plan
D1.4 – Sustainability strategy
D1.5 – Policy Brief M18 (Deliverable towards the funder)
D1.6 – Policy Brief M30 (Deliverable towards the funder)
D1.7 – New ontologies implemented on the EURO- BIOIMAGING Web Portal and Web Portal linked to image data in public repositories
D2.1 – Landscape analysis of existing ontologies and recommendations on a set of imaging ontologies
D3.1 – Engagement with GIDE
D4.1 – Report on the recommended ontologies for preclinical image datasets and technologies
D5.1 – Updating existing ontologies, and implementing in data resources
D5.2 – Maintenance plan for ontology sustainability
D6.1 – Report in metadata model overlap and gaps
D7.1 – Minimal shared interoperability metadata set
D8.1 – Recommended harmonized metadata model for preclinical image datasets
D9.1 – First report on external GIDE network engagement
D9.2 – Second report on external GIDE network engagement
D10.1 – Model description and snapshot
D11.1 – Data portal and supporting API
D12.1 – Tools for ontology and metadata management, and metadata interoperability
These reports capture the knowledge, experience, and recommendations developed throughout the project and are intended as resources for researchers, infrastructure providers, repository developers, and policy makers.
foundingGIDE by the numbers
Over the past three years, foundingGIDE has brought together a diverse international community working towards a common vision.
foundingGIDE at a glance
> 40 countries represented
> more than 430 community members engaged
> 3 global community events organized
> 120 community events and meeting attended
> 20 deliverables
> 3 publications
These numbers only tell part of the story. Behind each collaboration, workshop, report, and technical development are the many people who generously shared their expertise and helped shape the project’s outcomes.
Thank you to our community
The success of foundingGIDE has been made possible by the commitment of its partners and the many individuals and organizations who contributed throughout the project.
We would like to sincerely thank our project partners, members of the Scientific Advisory Committee, speakers, workshop participants, collaborators, community representatives, and everyone who engaged with foundingGIDE over the past 2.5 years. Your ideas, expertise, and enthusiasm have helped build a stronger foundation for global image data interoperability.
Looking ahead
Although foundingGIDE has officially concluded, GIDE has just began.
The project’s outputs, including reports, recommendations and technical resources, will remain available to support researchers and organizations working towards FAIR and interoperable image data. Many of the collaborations established through foundingGIDE will continue within research infrastructures, global initiatives, and future projects, ensuring that the momentum generated over the past 2.5 years is carried forward.
Building a truly global image data ecosystem is an ongoing journey, and foundingGIDE has helped lay some of its essential foundations. Our Sustainability Strategy (D1.4) highlights strategies used by our partners to maintain our core infrastructure. All project outputs will remain permanently accessible via GitHub, Zenodo, and the Euro-BioImaging YouTube channel.
We extend our deepest gratitude to our partners, Euro-BioImaging, EMBL-EBI, RIKEN, German BioImaging, Global BioImaging, Microscopy Australia, the National Imaging Facility, and CNR, and to the global community of researchers and data stewards who turned this vision into a reality. Together, we have ensured that bioimaging data will continue to evolve as a vital research asset for the age of AI-driven discovery.
Thank you for being part of the foundation of GIDE.
See you next at the Global BioImaging Exchange of Experience in Heidelberg, Germany.
