The Single Cell Omics Germany (SCOG) project, launched in 2018, set out to create a national network that would bring together researchers working with single‑cell technologies and raise the visibility of German work in this rapidly evolving field. The initiative was coordinated from three hubs—Munich, Berlin and Saarbrücken—under a steering committee that initially comprised seven representatives from bioinformatics, experimental biology and clinical research, later expanded to nine to include additional clinical experts. The project was funded through German research agencies, with the German Research Foundation (DFG) providing the core grant that enabled the network’s activities over a five‑year period.
From a scientific perspective, SCOG organized a series of workshops, hackathons and lecture series that attracted hundreds of participants each. The first meeting and hackathon in October 2018 at the Institute of Computational Biology in Munich drew 22 participants and featured 17 talks, while a subsequent hackathon focused on RNA‑seq data analysis engaged 20 participants. In November 2018, a workshop on advances in single‑cell epigenomics hosted seven talks and a discussion round‑table. The March 2019 workshop on computational single‑cell genomics drew 160 participants across 17 talks and a poster session, and a parallel hackathon offered advanced training in the Scanpy software. The LifeTime Opening Conference in May 2019, co‑organised by SCOG, attracted around 500 attendees for 33 talks and poster sessions. In November 2019, another epigenomics workshop and hackathon brought together 20 participants for training in epiScanpy. The 2020 virtual lecture series “Recent Advances in Single Cell Omics” ran from May to December, producing 13 episodes that averaged 180 viewers each, totaling 814 unique viewers. A 2020 virtual workshop on temporal single‑cell analysis drew about 650 participants, while a 2020 virtual session on recent advances in single‑cell epigenomics attracted 230 participants. An internal SCOG workshop in September 2020 combined 15 in‑person and 80 virtual attendees from the steering committee and affiliated labs.
Beyond live events, SCOG established a robust online presence. A dedicated YouTube channel, launched to overcome time‑zone differences and provide on‑demand access, grew to 1,330 subscribers by July 2023, with 58 videos accumulating 39,391 views. Monthly viewership averaged 1,620, and the most popular videos—covering spatial and temporal single‑cell analysis—each received between 137 and 2,973 views. The channel’s success helped promote spatial transcriptomics, which was named Nature’s Method of the Year in 2021, thereby enhancing the international profile of German single‑cell research.
Communication with partners and the broader community was maintained through regular email announcements and a newsletter that began in 2019. The newsletter highlighted network milestones, partner publications, new research initiatives such as DeCOI and the German Human Gene Archive (GHGA), and opportunities for collaboration. It also advertised upcoming virtual events and job openings in partner laboratories.
SCOG’s collaborative framework linked German institutions with international partners, notably the LifeTime consortium, and facilitated the exchange of expertise across bioinformatics, experimental and clinical domains. By creating a virtual network, hosting high‑attendance workshops, and maintaining an active online platform, the project succeeded in raising the profile of single‑cell omics in Germany and fostering a community that continues to contribute to cutting‑edge research in spatial transcriptomics and beyond.