Join us for April Connect 2026!
Jinny Park
Dear Colleagues,
If you haven’t yet registered for the GA4GH April Connect 2026 meeting in Montreal, this is a reminder that the registration deadline is 6 April.
The meeting will be held from 14 to 17 April at Le Centre Sheraton Montreal. This is a working meeting for our community to collaborate on the GA4GH Road Map and the next phase of genomic and health data standards.
🌟 Meeting highlights and high-level themes
This year’s agenda is packed with hands-on sessions. Key themes include:
Artificial Intelligence: the official launch of the GA4GH AI Work Stream and sessions on building trustworthy AI and generative AI guidance
Interoperability: deep dives into Beacon v3.0, HL7 FHIR integration, and alignment between the GKS and Clin/Pheno Work Streams
Federated trust and governance: expanding the impact of GA4GH Passports, exploring eIDAS, and operationalising data stewardship in cloud environments
Global engagement: dedicated sessions on genomic data sharing in Asia and ethical considerations for partnerships in LMICs
🗓️ Agenda at a glance
Tuesday, 14 April: Connect Welcome | Work Streams & Communities Showcase | Harmonising Categorical Variants with Beacon | TASC-athon: Le Monstre | GA4GH au Canada | Passports & Computable Governance | Federated Variant-Level Matching | Welcome Reception
Wednesday, 15 April: Data Sharing in Asia | Federated Learning Hackathon | GKS & Clin/Pheno Interoperability | Data Stewardship & Cloud Maturity | Clinical Data in Beacon | GIF: Federated Trust | LMIC Partnerships & Ethics | REWS Impact Assessment | National Initiatives Forum (NIF) | Experiments Metadata | GA4GH Analytics Dashboard
Thursday, 16 April: AI Work Stream Launch | Responsible Generative AI Guidance | Passports & eIDAS | Verifiable Credentials Infrastructure | Beacon v2 & HL7 FHIR Integration | Passport/AAI 2.0 Pathways | Rare Disease Trajectories | Provenance Metadata
Friday, 17 April: Beacon v3.0 Roadmap | Beacon v3.0: Structural, Categorical & Long-read Variation | Neuroscience Data Sharing | Register-a-thon | GKS Roadmap | Integrating GA4GH APIs | GIF Project Showcase
The full Connect agenda, including session agendas, can be found on the event website.
Hope to see you in Montreal!
Best regards,
Jinny
