European research: Raising the game in the European Research Area

The fostering of truly integrated structural biologists with access to the most advanced technology available will help make Europe the leading force in structural biology. Researchers working from small groups or institutes will be able to take on bigger scientific challenges thanks to Instruct. The new areas of research opened by integration and collaboration will generate scientific breakthroughs. We also believe that promoting high-impact research will attract the best scientists to Europe.

We believe that we can raise the standard of scientific work by making integrated approaches to science more accessible. Structural biology is not the only field that requires investment in expensive technology infrastructures and risks developing researchers with specialist but overly narrow skills. We know more integrated approaches can deliver significant advances in structural biology. The same should be true in a wide range of sciences.

Fragmentation of research inhibits Europe’s potential for innovation, makes investment less effective, and reduces our ability to solve problems such as ageing populations, pandemics and climate change. Part of the solution is the establishment of the European Research Area. This will foster greater cooperation and collaboration across European Union member states and encourage the region’s sustainable development and competitiveness. Instruct-ERIC is one of the biomedical sciences projects that contributes to making the European Research Area a reality.

Biological and Medical Sciences (BMS) Research Infrastructures

The Biological and Medical Sciences (BMS) Research Infrastructures are a sub-set of the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) roadmap in the thematic area of Health and Food. The most recent ESFRI roadmap, published in September 2018, identified and prioritized 10 landmarks and 6 projects in health and food which are essential to realize to Europe’s potential to lead the world in innovative Health and Food sciences. From these projects and landmarks, 13 are in the areas of biological and medical sciences, and these infrastructures have committed to long term strategic collaboration.  Instruct-ERIC is one of the BMS Research Infrastructures.

ESFRI represents the Member States’ research ministries and the European Commission. ESFRI was established in April 2002 to produce the “European Roadmap on Research Infrastructures” reflecting a common mid- to long-term strategy for European Member States. ESFRI published its first roadmap in 2006. Since then there have been revised roadmaps published, most recently in 2018.

The directors and coordinators of the BMS infrastructures meet regularly at the BMS Strategy Board to exchange best practice, to identify and discuss issues encountered by each RI initiative, and to work on identified bottlenecks which occurred on the way to implementation.

BMS Research Infrastructures also collaborate in the H2020 cluster projects CORBEL and EOSC-Life. The current BMS Strategy Board Chair is Anton Ussi, Operations and Finance Director For EATRIS hub. 

BMS Research Infrastructures

 

 

 

 

 

Name Field Coordinator / Director
BBMRI-ERIC  Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure Erik Steinfelder (Austria)
EATRIS European Advanced Translational Research Infrastructure in Medicine Anton Ussi (Netherlands)
ECRIN European Clinical Research Infrastructures Network Jacques Demotes (France)
ELIXIR European Life Science Infrastructure for Biological Information Niklas Blomberg (United Kingdom)
EMBRC European Marine Biological Resource Centre Nicolas Pade (France)
EMPHASIS European infrastructure for Multi-Scale Plant Phenomics and Simulation Ulrich Schurr (Germany)
EU-OPENSCREEN European Infrastructure of Open Screening Platforms for Chemical Biology Wolfgang Fecke (Germany)
Euro-BioImaging European Biomedical Imaging Infrastructure Jan Ellenberg (Germany)
ERINHA European Research Infrastructure on Highly Pathogenic Agents Hervé Raoul (France)
INFAFRONTIER European Infrastructure for Phenotyping and Archiving of Model Mammalian Genomes Martin Hrabé de Angelis (Germany)
Instruct-ERIC Integrated Structural Biology Infrastructure for Europe Dave I Stuart (United Kingdom)
ISBE Infrastructure for Systems Biology Europe Richard Kitney (United Kingdom)
MIRRI

Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure

Marleen Bosschaerts (Belgium)