SpatiaLondon Network

SpatiaLondon is a new network created by King’s College London’s Hub for Applied Bioinformatics with co-leads at UCL, Imperial College London, Queen Mary University and the Francis Crick Institute. The network will bring together spatial omics and imaging researchers, research software engineers (RSEs), data stewards, platform engineers, and bioinformaticians to share practice and develop a shared understanding of what “good” looks like in spatial research.

Together, we will co-create an open Spatial Methods Guide and a one-page Checklist that make best practice clear, practical, and usable across common platforms (Xenium, CosMx, Visium HD) and tissue types. The guide will cover the core foundations teams need to work well together, including minimal metadata and FAIR handover, quality control, reproducible pipelines and documentation, governance and data sharing, and low-carbon compute.

We will test the checklist on real studies, identify and correct faulty methodology through short, targeted clinics, and publish version 1.0 of both the guide and checklist on our website with a DOI. A train-the-trainer course will enable local experts to teach and champion the materials within their own teams.

All outputs will be openly licensed and designed for reuse across the UK. A final online webinar will bring together doctoral training programmes (dRTPs) nationwide. Collectively, these activities will create a practical foundation for a larger, follow-on effort to scale standards, training, and community under the SpatiaLondon banner.