The Sequence Read Archive (SRA) is the NCBI's archive of high-throughput sequencing data and is hosted by the National Institutes of Health. This presentation examines the journey of evolving a petabyte-scale biomedical data repository into a cloud-enabled, production-grade ecosystem. We describe strategies for operating and scaling in a live research environment, balancing reliability, governance, and modernization, while enhancing FAIR alignment and federated design principles. The result is a resilient, standards-based framework and platform that supports sustainable discovery across distributed infrastructures.

This talk will describe the evolution of AbbVie's omics data strategy from a disparate collection of siloed, single-purpose tools into a unified, commons-based approach. Today, AbbVie is leveraging a common omic data model, ontologies, and visualization tools to achieve FAIR principles and impact the pipeline. The omics commons establishes a better way forward for archiving, re-analyzing, meta-analyzing, and discovering omic data.

In an era where data forms the backbone of biomedical innovation, it is essential to rethink governance, foster literacy, and enable sharing. This presentation explores how modern life science organizations/companies drive data-centric transformation through clear responsibilities, cultural change, and strategic partnerships.

Blockchain's decentralized, immutable ledger can revolutionize clinical trials by ensuring data integrity, security, and transparency. It streamlines data sharing, manages patient consent, and enhances drug supply tracking. By providing a tamper-proof record, it builds trust among stakeholders and supports decentralized trials. However, challenges like scalability, high costs, lack of regulations, and the need for specialized training must be addressed for its successful adoption in the highly regulated clinical research environment.

This presentation will connect principals of quality data to initiatives ongoing at GSK to increase the speed, confidence, and compliance of work to bring medicines to patients. Applications of metadata collection and curation, data modeling, and the use of ontologies to drive data integration will be shown to increase the scope of data available to compute.

This talk will share a proven enterprise approach and execution with actual case studies to govern, harmonize, and leverage data assets and data products to drive AI-ready Master Data and Reference data to advance on-demand patient-centric vision and drive end-to-end business value across R&D, Commercial, and Supply Chain functions.

The DTS Portal is a transformative solution for biomarker data operations, designed to address the persistent bottlenecks in onboarding external vendor data. In pharmaceutical research, creating Data Transfer Specifications (DTSes) between sponsors like BMS and external vendors is often a slow, manual, and error-prone process. The DTS Portal replaces this with a centralized, user-friendly interface that automates document creation, version control, and stakeholder collaboration.

As the complexity of clinical trial data grows, traditional management approaches struggle to keep pace with scale, compliance, and scientific demand. This presentation explores how FAIR data principles, data mesh frameworks, and AI-driven tools can transform life sciences data management. Drawing on real-world experience at Genentech/Roche, it will demonstrate strategies for enabling data reuse, enhancing quality, and preparing organizations for next-generation analytics and decision-making.

Since 2003, Bio-IT World has hosted an elite awards program highlighting exceptional examples of technology innovation and strategic initiatives advancing life sciences research. Winners of the 2026 Bio-IT World Innovative Practices Awards—recognized during the morning plenary keynote—will present during this session. Presentation titles and abstracts will be added in April 2026, following the public announcement of award recipients. For more information or to submit an application, visit www.bioitworldexpo.com/innovativepractices.

For 20 years, Trends from the Trenches has been Bio-IT World’s unscripted pulse check, offering candid, insider perspectives on what works, what fails, and what’s pure hype in scientific computing. As the field evolved, the session broadened to reflect the real operational challenges and breakthroughs shaping R&D. For 2026, the format evolves again: a focused, credibility-driven keynote paired with a community-powered unconference built from attendee input. The result is a forum for late-breaking insights, grounded realities, forward-looking perspectives, and practical solutions you won’t find in vendor decks, marketing summaries, or any LLM. It leaves participants energized by the collective intelligence in the room and inspired by the emerging possibilities shaping the future of life-science computing.

This presentation frames the industry’s next chapter by tracing how Trends from the Trenches has shaped digital R&D for two decades and by spotlighting the forces redefining scientific computing today: AI–HPC convergence, modality-driven compute, multimodal data, and rising expectations for speed, interoperability, and trust. Remarks set the foundation for a forward-looking exploration of where digital biology and computational innovation are heading next.

This session features a structured, participatory unconference built around topics sourced from Bio-IT event attendees during the conference week. A working group synthesizes all submissions Wednesday evening into a small set of high-value discussion themes. The facilitator guides the room through rapid-fire exchanges, micro-debates, and collaborative problem-solving focused on operational realities in AI, computing, data engineering, and scientific software. The goal is to surface patterns, stress-test ideas, and extract practical solutions emerging across the community—creating an annual, crowd-generated state-of-the-field snapshot that only this session can produce.