A number of great steps forward were taken at the first ELIXIR Board meeting in Helsinki on 7-8 April 2014. The draft ELIXIR programme for 2014-2018 was discussed in great detail by Members and is due to be adopted in the coming weeks.
ELIXIR Nodes in Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and EMBL-EBI were officially approved and formally established by the Board. A template Collaboration Agreement was also adopted - this will now form the basis for the agreement between the ELIXIR Hub and Nodes on the services that will be delivered. Using the template as the basis, individual country-specific Collaboration Agreements will now be negotiated between the ELIXIR Hub and each ELIXIR Node, taking into account the unique services that will be run from the Nodes.
The ELIXIR Board also agreed to establish a working group to draft an ELIXIR ethics policy and to create an Industry Advisory Committee - made up of high-level respresentatives from users, suppliers and publishers - to provide strategic guidance to partners on the relevance to industry of ELIXIR services.
Dr Alf Game (UK) was elected as Chair of the Board, with Prof. Rein Aasland (NO) and Prof. Torsten Schwede (CH) elected as Vice Chairs.
ELIXIR Board Members, Observers and Visitors at the first ELIXIR Board meeting in Helsinki, 7-8 April 2014
