Ms Amanda Zhu1, Dr Steven Manos, Uwe Winter
1Australia Biocommons, Sydney, Australia
Biography:
Amanda Zhu is the Software Group Lead at Australian BioCommons, where she leads the development of national-scale infrastructure to support life sciences research. With a background in autonomous systems and bioinformatics, she specializes in building secure, interoperable, and user-centric platforms. Amanda currently heads the BioCommons AAI initiative—an identity and access solution designed to unify authentication across Australia’s life science services. She collaborates with teams from Galaxy Australia, Bioplatforms Australia, and other partners to streamline data access and service integration. Amanda is passionate about creating digital research environments that are both robust and accessible for diverse scientific communities.
Abstract:
Background
The Australian BioCommons operates a range of online data and analysis platforms for molecular life sciences research. These include Galaxy Australia and the Bioplatforms Data Portal. Each of these platforms maintains its own identity and access management. This has led to fragmented user experiences, inconsistent security, and reliance on repetitive manual tasks—such as logging into multiple platforms to transfer data for analysis. These disjointed identity workflows and siloed data mobility are major barriers to efficiency, collaboration, and reproducibility in modern life sciences.
Method
To address these systemic limitations, Australian BioCommons is building a common Identity and Access Infrastructure (AAI) designed to unify authentication and authorization across the ecosystem. Using Auth0 as its core, the solution enables email-based self-registration, role-based access control, metadata-driven automation, and centralized administration. This solution supports ISO 27001 compliance and is engineered for extensibility across future services.
Results
Early integrations with Galaxy Australia and the Bioplatforms Data Portal have validated core functionality including centralized user registration, automated group-based permissions, and seamless user management. These components reduce the operational burden on individual services and demonstrate how a shared identity layer can unify disparate systems under a single, researcher-friendly access framework.
Conclusion
More than a technical uplift, this initiative establishes a foundational infrastructure for streamlined, secure, and scalable access across Australia’s life sciences platforms. By eliminating redundant identity handoffs and supporting transparent data flow between services, the AAI unlocks a federated model for managing researcher access—enhancing productivity, fostering collaboration, and enabling deeper integration across the national research landscape.