ELIXIR Slovenia

ELIXIR Slovenia (ELIXIR-SI) is a consortium of 12 partners coordinated by University of Ljubljana (UL) (Faculty of Medicine). ELIXIR-SI members are Slovenian research organizations who signed the National Node Consortium Agreement and are as follows:

• Academia: University of Ljubljana (UL) (Biotechnical Faculty (BF), Faculty of Computer and Information Science (FRI), Faculty of Medicine (MF), Veterinary Faculty(VF)) and University of Maribor (UM)
• Research institutes: Agricultural Institute of Slovenia (KIS), Jozef Stefan Institute (IJS), National Institute of Biology (NIB), National Institute of Chemistry (KI), National Laboratory of Health, Environment and Food (NLZOH)
• Clinical institution: University Medical Centre Ljubljana (UKCLJ)
• e-infrastructure / NREN organization: The Academic and Research Network of Slovenia (ARNES).

More details about consortium partners are available at https://elixir-slovenia.org/about-us/.

ELIXIR-SI is actively upgrading the existing and is establishing new infrastructure in the Slovenian research area through three pillars:

1. a national infrastructure for obtaining high-density data with high-throughput genomic technologies,
2. a central national data node for life sciences (data management, data storage, databases, bioinformatics),
3. a center for education and training in life sciences (usage of bioinformatics tools, analysis and services).

The upgrade was funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports. Funding has finished in mid 2021 but the project runs through 2026.

Through its research infrastructure ELIXIR-SI helps in organisation and implementation of the Slovenian Open Science and FAIR data policy by making knowledge, equipment and research data optimally accessible for research and innovation also in tight collaboration with other national ESFRI RI nodes, e.g. Slovenian Euro-BioImaging node (SiMBION).

Tools and services (including consultations) that we offer:

• ELIXIR-SI eLearning Platform (EeLP), which is part of ELIXIR Training Platform services
• Slovenian Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW)
• HPC and Bioinformatics tools and services
• Wet-lab data generation tools and services (including NGS and Single cell sequencing)
• other central or ELIXIR-SI consortium partners’ tools and services

Nationally, there are several ELIXIR-SI expert groups active, currently the most active is ELIXIR-SI-SB, Systems Biology expert group that incorporated the former ISBE.si node.

ELIXIR-SI members are also active in ELIXIR Platforms (mainly in Training) and in several ELIXIR Communities (Co-leading Plant Sciences) and Focus Groups.

ELIXIR-SI partners are involved in different other national and international projects listed on the ELIXIR Slovenia website.

The vision of ELIXIR-SI is to build an integrated life-sciences (including health) data infrastructure for research and innovation. Through data generation, data integration, capacity building and training at the national and international levels we aim towards personalised approaches to improve human, animal and plant health.