​​iNEXT-Discovery: Infrastructure for transnational access and discovery in integrated structural biology

    

Project Description: iNEXT-Discovery, a novel infrastructure for NMR, Electron microscopy (EM) and X-rays for Translational research (iNEXT) will enable the Discovery of new pharmaceuticals, biologics, materials, biofuels, food formulations, and other tools that European scientists can envisage, and that we can help to bring to reality. The iNEXT-Discovery builds on the success of iNEXT, taking it further by enabling more efficient and new cutting-edge structural biology access to users, facilitating for instance fragment-based drug discovery campaigns, the structure determination of large molecular machines, the observation of molecular structures and dynamics within cells, and numerous more applications by the wider user community. iNEXT-Discovery aims to fully release the enormous potential of advanced instruments and top-notch scientific expertise from leading European research infrastructures for structural biology, making it available across scientific disciplines and all across Europe. This main objective will be realised by the coordinated offering of access to the existing structural biology community, but crucially also to user communities that have been less exposed to these facilities. The rich and energetic research environment that is available at all partner sites catalyses the four joint research activities within the iNEXT-Discovery project. We aim to further consolidate a strong structural biology presence in drug discovery pipelines by streamlining fragment based drug discovery pipelines, by high-throughput delivery of samples to maximise the efficiency of user access in our facilities, on offering novel scientific opportunities for following molecules in time, and on developing more efficient tools and procedures to analyse structures in situ within cells. All the iNEXT-Discovery JRAs aim to improve structural biology technology. Also, we will embrace a strong focus on the digitalisation and automation of structural biology services. Together, our JRAs will strongly improve the access provision of the offered technologies to facility users, both novice and experienced.

​​The European Proteomics Infrastructure Consortium providing access

Project Description: The European Proteomics Infrastructure Consortium providing access (EPIC-XS) consists of a unified network of experienced access providers and research groups who share a common goal; to facilitate the development and sustainability of proteomics exploration to all life science researchers within the European Union. The initiative is coordinated by Albert Heck, professor of Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics at Utrecht University.

EPIC-XS will provide scientists transnational access to high end proteomics technologies and resources. The project will strengthen and expand the European proteomics community through its expertise in proteomics. It’s excellent training courses and programs, available to both novices and experts, will attract new research communities who will be schooled in advanced proteomics technologies.

The initiative brings together some of the most world renowned proteomics laboratories and researchers. The community has  expertise in accommodating and guiding researchers within the life sciences, as many of the  members also participated in the pan- European PRIME-XS initiative, which ended in 2015.

​​EOSC-Life: Providing an open collaborative space for digital biology in Europe

Project Description: In EOSC-Life the 13 Biological and Medical Research Infrastructures in Europe join forces to create an open collaborative digital space for life science in the European Open Science Cloud. We will do this by publishing our data as FAIR Data Resources, connecting reusable Tools and Workflows to standardised compute services in national life-science clouds, connecting our users across Europe to a single login authentication and resource authorisation system, and developing the data policies needed to preserve and deepen the trust given by research participants and patients volunteering their data and samples.

​​Connect and align ELIXIR Nodes to deliver sustainable FAIR life-science data management services

Project Description: The diversity, complexity and volume, as well as privacy and regulatory considerations, necessitate a collaborative and federated approach to life-science data. For scientists to find and share data across to continuously develop and connect its services. The international ecosystem provided by ELIXIR – with 220 institutes in 23 Nodes, connecting hundreds of bioinformatics services – is globally unique and a competitive advantage for European research. Through our national Nodes ELIXIR has the geographical spread, service portfolio and expertise to fulfil our ambition that every European project uses FAIR data based on common standards, tools and services. The initial operational phase of ELIXIR, supported by the H2020 ELIXIR-EXCELERATE project, focussed on the coordination and delivery of bioinformatics services from national Nodes. This lay the foundation for a coordinated European infrastructure. ELIXIR-CONVERGE will build on these achievements to deliver another critical component: the provisioning, across Europe, of distributed local support for data management based on a toolkit for researchers that enables lifecycle management for their research data according to international standards. ELIXIR-CONVERGE will develop the national operations of such a distributed research infrastructure to drive good data management, reproducibility and reuse in a heterogeneous funding landscape. Over 36 months and with partners from our 23 Nodes, ELIXIR-CONVERGE takes the next step to realise a European data federation where interconnected national operations, strategically managed via national research infrastructure roadmaps, allow users to extract knowledge from life science’s large, diverse and distributed datasets. By connecting ELIXIR Nodes to provide FAIR data management as a service, ELIXIR-CONVERGE will build national capacity and create a blueprint for operating sustainable Nodes in distributed research infrastructures.