Yacooba Labs is a Portuguese data engineering company specialising in federated data infrastructure for biological collections and bioresources.

We built and operate the Blue Biobanks Digital Research Platform (bluebiobanksplatform.com), developed under Portugal's Blue Digital Hub programme with CIIMAR, IPMA and the University of Aveiro. It federates five biological collections running on three mutually incompatible source systems into one searchable catalogue, without requiring any institution to migrate or to surrender data ownership. Our layer handles capture, mapping, normalisation, indexing, georeferenced search and controlled synchronisation, using Darwin Core and MIxS as the harmonisation framework and REST/JSON for exchange.

We also deliver record-level provenance and access traceability: immutable version history, persistent unique identifiers, field-level disclosure control and editorial review workflows - the infrastructure that Nagoya Protocol / ABS obligations and benefit-sharing claims need in order to be verifiable rather than declarative.

Skills: data federation and interoperability, FAIR data management, biodiversity data standards, API design, geospatial search, research data platform engineering.

Bioinformatics

We are looking to join a BiodivFuture consortium as the partner responsible for data management, integration and interoperability.

Most consortia carry a data component that nobody wants to own: many partners, incompatible systems, FAIR obligations imposed by the funder, and a data management plan written at proposal stage and forgotten during delivery. We bring a working platform rather than a methodological intention - the architecture is already built, deployed and running across three institutions.

Our contribution is strongest in Theme C. Fair and equitable benefit-sharing from biodiversity cannot be demonstrated without traceable provenance at the level of the individual record: where material came from, under what legal terms it was accessed, who received it and for what purpose. That is what our platform records today, and it is the layer that turns benefit-sharing from a stated principle into an auditable one.

We can also translate biological records into terms that non-scientific stakeholders can act on, indexed across ten blue economy sectors and thirteen application areas - useful where a project needs genuine uptake beyond academia.

We can participate either as a funded Portuguese partner or as a self-financed partner covering our own costs.

data federation, interoperability, fair data, darwin core, biological collections, biobanks, abs traceability, nagoya protocol, marine biodiversity, research data infrastructure

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