The EMBL European Learning Laboratory for the Life Sciences (ELLS) has been helping EMBL alumni to attract school leavers in their country to a career in science, and sharing know-how on providing an infrastructure to help teachers with science teaching.

Barely had ELLS been established at EMBL in 2003 when the first alumni request came from the University of Milan, asking to share know-how and help set up a similar education facility in Italy. A year later, CusMiBio was launched and has now become a well-established education and outreach facility, providing thousands of Italian students and teachers opportunities to get hands-on experience and learn about cutting-edge science.

In the meantime, ELLS staff have dealt with additional requests from alumni in Greece, Portugal, Spain and the Ukraine, where they have helped set up similar programmes, modelled on ELLS LearningLABs.

As part of the EMBL International Centre for Advanced Training (EICAT), ELLS plans to expand these activities further. Their first focus is to identify alumni in the Scandinavian countries who would like to establish similar education projects, though they remain open to requests from all countries, provided that projects are supported by the local authorities (education ministries), to ensure the establishment of a sustainable education facility.