ESFRI Engagement

The competitive and open access to high quality research infrastructures supports and benchmarks the quality of the activities of European scientists, and attracts the best researchers from around the world. The Forum operates at the forefront of European and global science policy and contributes to its development by translating political objectives into concrete advice for RI in Europe.

EMBL is involved in the below listed ESFRI landmarks.

ELIXIR is an intergovernmental consortium that brings together the national life-science data infrastructure resources in Europe. These resources include databases, software tools, training materials, interoperability resources and compute and storage services. ELIXIR is coordinated by a Hub and consists of 23 countries including EMBL, who played a leading role in its founding.

Beside being a Member, EMBL also takes on the role of an ELIXIR Node through EMBL-EBI. In this function it is involved in data provision and standards setting, connecting with other ELIXIR Nodes via ELIXIR Commissioned Services. It is ELIXIR’s purpose to provide the standards, coordination and services so that resources run by national bioinformatics infrastructures and those of EMBL-EBI can be connected into a single infrastructure that supports data exchange and European collaborations.

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Euro-BioImaging is a pan-European research infrastructure consortium for state-of-the-art imaging services in biological and biomedical research. Through Euro-BioImaging, life scientists can access imaging instruments, expertise, training opportunities and data management services. This is another ESFRI landmark, in whose establishment EMBL played a leading role.

The fully distributed infrastructure is coordinated by a Hub and offers its services via 25 internationally renowned imaging facilities called Nodes, which are located across 11 countries and EMBL, who together with Finland and Italy form the Euro-BioImaging Hub. By facilitating user access to high quality imaging facilities, resources and services, Euro-BioImaging will boost the productivity and impact of research across Europe.

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Instruct-ERIC is a pan-European distributed research infrastructure making high-end technologies and methods in structural biology available to users. Its purpose is to promote innovation in biomedical science and to operate on a non-economic basis within the scope of the ERIC Regulation. Instruct-ERIC comprises of 15 Member Countries including EMBL as the first intergovernmental organisation to join Instruct-Eric.

In 2020 a dedicated working group was set up and focused efforts in establishing three of EMBL’s sites: Heidelberg, Grenoble and Hamburg, as the new Instruct Centre. The Centre successfully started its operations in the beginning of 2021 and offers access to a broad range of state-of-the-art facilities for the preparation, crystallisation, and biophysical and structural characterisation of biological samples.

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