2024 NMDC Ambassadors created connections across the microbiome field

In 2021, the National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC) team launched the NMDC Ambassador program to promote Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data awareness in the microbiome research community. As NMDC Ambassadors, early career researchers learn how NMDC tools can help researchers create, use, and reuse microbiome data with the NMDC Data Portal and API, the NMDC Submission Portal, and NMDC EDGE. This year, Ambassadors also learned about the development of the NMDC Field Notes mobile app for metadata collection on-the-go, which will be publicly released in April 2025. After these training sessions, they then collaborated with the NMDC team to develop training materials specific to their research fields and lead workshops or events for researchers in their communities.

Summary of Ambassador events

In 2024, the third cohort of NMDC Ambassadors consisted of 24 microbiome researchers, including graduate students, postdoctoral associates, educators, and staff scientists, and was nearly double the size of previous cohorts. They hosted 36 events and reached over 900 scientists in their respective communities. Nine Ambassadors collaborated with each other at their institutions and as part of virtual research events. Ambassador Iyanu Oduwole presented to a wide range of microbiome researchers, from high schoolers to staff scientists. Reflecting upon his experience this year, he mentioned, “One particularly memorable experience was interacting with researchers from Stellenbosch, South Africa, during the Reads to Functions workshop organized by KBase in partnership with NMDC. Their enthusiasm and excitement about my presence at the workshop left a lasting impression.”

Ambassadors Nicola Kriefall, Kacie Kajihara, and Andrian Gajigan hosted an NMDC training event at their institution, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Photo Credit: Kacie Kajihara

This year, the Ambassador events led to many connections across the microbiome research community. An attendee learned about the NMDC at a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) event hosted by Ambassadors Zachary Burcham and Oduwole. She then reached out to Ambassador Lennel Camuy-Vélez to host an event at her home institution in Puerto Rico for 25 undergraduate students. Ambassadors Camuy-Vélez, Viviana Alban, and Lílian Caesar were all able to host events in their native languages, Spanish and Portuguese, to provide FAIR data training to communities around the world. Ambassador Shane Roesemann provided FAIR microbiome data training across career and education levels, from undergraduates to staff scientists. His extensive work with a CURE (Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience) program provided a unique avenue to teach undergraduates about NMDC resources to benefit their research experiences. He spoke about how his time as an Ambassador impacted his education efforts, stating, “Previously, in my CURE, Tiny Earth Genomics, my students designed a research project where they used bioinformatic workflows to reanalyze public data but had to choose from a small number of datasets curated by me, their instructor. Now, my students will instead pick their own datasets from the NMDC Data Portal which allows them to have more ownership over their research. This will result in more engagement and satisfaction and will enable them to ask more nuanced and complex research questions by potentially combining related datasets. I can see future iterations of this course where they use other NMDC resources such as EDGE or the provided Jupyter notebooks to aid in analysis.”

Group photo of participants at Ambassador Patrick Sorenson’s event at the University of Arizona Ecosystem Genomics annual symposium, the Convergence Institute. Photo credit: Patrick Sorenson

The NMDC Ambassador Program continues to grow thanks to the feedback and support of previous cohorts. For the 2025 cohort, we are incorporating feedback from the 2024 cohort to make the program as effective as possible for the research community. This year, we will be providing more networking opportunities for Ambassadors to connect with each other and the NMDC community. We will also be supporting additional activities such as hands-on working groups, piloting educational materials for the microbiome community, and reusing data in the NMDC Data Portal. Early career researchers are invited to apply to the 2025 NMDC Ambassador cohort by February 28, 2025. Interested candidates can visit the NMDC Ambassador webpage to learn more about the program. 

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