We are pleased to announce the launch of the 2025 open call for the Biodiversity, food security and pathogens (BFSP) and Cellular and molecular research (CMR) priority areas. This call offers an opportunity for ELIXIR members to propose collaborative projects that drive innovation and deliver technical outputs aligned with the 2024–2028 ELIXIR Scientific Programme.
Please carefully review the general information, eligibility criteria and priority area specific guidance (CMR or BFSP) on this page. We look forward to receiving high-quality proposals that strengthen ELIXIR services, infrastructure and community collaborations.
Timeline
- Expression of Interest (EoI): 12 May to 16 June 2025
- Full proposal submission (subject to approved EoI): 23 June 2025 to 15 September 2025
- Notification to applicants on outcomes: November 2025
- Issue of proposal of funding letters: December 2025 and January 2026
Planned project starting date: 1 January 2026
Funding letters might only be issued during the second half of January. We nevertheless, as much as possible, encourage a soft project start during January 2026.
Completion date: 31 December 2026
All projects must be completed by the end of 2026.
Duration: Up to 12 months
Submission process
1. Expression of Interest
- Participants planning to submit a proposal must first submit an Expression of Interest (EoI) through the submission platform.
- The EoI must be submitted by the Project Lead/s representing the project applicants. That person will act as the contact person during the project application phase – EoI and full proposal submission phase – and be responsible for relaying and addressing any queries.
- The EoI will be assessed by the Hub to confirm procedural eligibility. Affiliated Community leads will have a veto right. Priority area leads will be consulted in cases of a mismatch, such as a BFSP proposal submitted to the CMR call.
- Successful EoI will be invited to hand in a full proposal submission.
2. Full proposal submission
- Full proposal submissions must be submitted via the submission platform.
- Evaluation of the full proposals will be carried out by a review panel, based on the 'Evaluation of the full proposal' details, as well as BFSP and CMR specific evaluation criteria.
EoI and and full proposal submissions should:
- Be concise and include ELIXIR context. Do not assume that reviewers will be fully acquainted with ELIXIR.
- Consist of only a few key activities (equivalent to work packages, but in adjusted scope), each with identified leaders and all of which align towards the one or two specific project topics.
- Provide an institute and activity-level justification for requested PMs.
- Describe the rationale for the consortium, outlining how the expertise, roles, and collaborative track record of the participating partners position them to deliver the objectives.
Evaluation of the full proposal submissions
A number of reviewers will be allocated to each proposal for assessment and scoring against the following criteria.
- Ambition: The novelty, including improvement of existing services or knowledge, expected outcomes and impact of the proposed research. Whether the proposal pushes the boundaries of current knowledge or services.
- Scope: The proposal's alignment with the call objectives and ELIXIR's objectives and research priorities in the 2024-28 Scientific Programme, especially the relevant Priority Area strategy document (BFSP, CMR).
- Context: The extent to which the proposal complements, connects with and avoids duplication of activities within ELIXIR (Platforms, Communities, Focus Groups or Services), and ELIXIR’s external partners and projects (international organisations, ESFRI, EU agencies and EC-funded projects).
- Balance: Whether the proposal adequately balances the involvement of member Nodes and Communities, while staying within realistic resource limits. The extent to which the proposal includes a diverse team including a mix of gender, geographical range and new and mature Nodes.
- Implementation: Whether the budget is appropriate for the project's scope and goals and if the proposed timeline would allow for realistic project completion.
- Scientific and technical rigour: The scientific soundness, methodology and technical approach of the proposal.
General
Deliverables and Milestones must be ambitious yet achievable, and should go beyond standard coordination activities typically carried out within ELIXIR.
In-kind contributions from institutes are welcome and do not need to be quantified. However, project deliverables should not rely on these contributions, and they must not be used to influence the reviewers’ evaluation of the proposal.
Project outputs should be of technical nature and are encouraged to include at least two of the following:
- Standards
- Services
- Guidelines
- Training
- Datasets
- Benchmarks
- Integrations
The Review panel will then consider and rank the scored proposals based on both overall reviewer scoring and alignment with the specific Scientific tier ambitions.
The Review panel reserves the right to propose small amendments to projects after review (e.g. timeline, deliverables/milestones and budget), but before issuance of funding. This is in order to accommodate the overall restrictions of the call and maximise the number of funded projects.
- Find more information on the open call process in the Guidelines for Commissioned Services.
- For general enquiries about the open call process, please contact proposals@elixir-europe.org.
- For enquiries related to a specific priority area, please see the contact listed for that open call.
The ELIXIR Hub will assess eligibility at two stages:
- Expression of Interest (EoI) – the Project Lead/s will be notified if there are issues with their submission.
- Full proposal submission – a second eligibility check, including validation of project partners, will be conducted prior to formal review.
The following list of requirements differentiates between institutes receiving person-month (i.e. salaried personnel) funding and others contributing in-kind. While in-kind contributions are welcome – and may be eligible for specific support such as travel or workshop costs – only institutes covered by a Node’s Collaboration Agreement are eligible for direct funding.
It is not necessary to obtain a Declaration of support from Heads of Nodes (HoNs) in advance. However, EoI and full proposal submissions will be shared with the relevant HoN during the eligibility assessment process. Final decisions regarding Node membership rest with the respective HoN, so applicants are advised to confirm institute affiliation with a Node prior to EoI or full proposal submission.
- Projects must be affiliated with one or two ELIXIR Communities. Relevant Community co-leads will be consulted after EoI submission and given the possibility to veto in case of a clear misalignment of the proposal and Community work. Submitters are not obliged to contact Community co-leads prior to EoI submission, but this is recommended.
- Projects must involve at least two participating institutes from different ELIXIR Nodes, with every funded institute receiving a minimum of two person-months (PMs) of support.
- Institutes not receiving personnel/salaried costs and contributing in-kind are eligible for travel funding.
- Every institute receiving PMs must be assigned at least one Deliverable or one Milestone within the project.
- The total number of Deliverables and Milestones needs to be proportional to the number of institutes receiving PM funding. As a guideline, aim for: Number of Deliverables + Milestones = Number of PM-funded institutes × 1.5
- The total number of Deliverables and Milestones per activity should not be higher than three. Milestones should represent intermediate results toward the final project deliverables.
- Proposals must not duplicate existing funded efforts, such as Platform work plans or Commissioned Service work, but can build on prior studies.
- Applicants may submit multiple applications but must ensure clear differentiation.
- Applicants may not submit an identical application to that submitted in any other funding call within ELIXIR that is open at the same time.
Applicants must submit a fully costed budget using the spreadsheet template provided at full proposal submission stage.
The budget should include personnel costs as Person Month allocations on an institute level to the nearest 0.5 PM.
Travel and event-related costs can be budgeted in one of two ways depending on the structure and needs of the project consortium:
1. Pre-allocated funds to each specific institute (declared individual optional, but a contact/liaison is necessary in all cases).
2. Lump-sum allocation to a single institute (with named liaison), which is then responsible for managing shared workshop/event expenses.
- While either approach is acceptable, pre-allocating funds to individual institutes has encouraged commitment in previous Commissioned Service, especially given the short project duration.
Institutes not receiving personnel/salaried costs and contributing in-kind can still receive funding for travel, where necessary, even for partners contributing in-kind. However, amounts must be declared in the proposal budget (i.e. the total budget should also include travel and other costs, beyond the PM allocation).
For clarity, any costs not included in the budget submitted for review will not be made available at any stage.
Adhere to budgeting principles outlined in Section 3 of Guidelines for Commissioned Services.
The ELIXIR Biodiversity, food security and pathogens scientific priority area aims to mobilise and integrate genetics and omics data to support research programmes in biodiversity, food security and pathogens including agriculture and aquaculture research. Its objectives are explained in the ELIXIR 2024-2028 Scientific Programme as well as the published ELIXIR - Biodiversity, food security and pathogens strategy and on a high level are as follows:
The Biodiversity, food security and pathogens priority area enables research in biodiversity, food security (including agroecology and agrobiodiversity) and pathogens through data mobilisation and integration activities. The strategy defines five objectives:
- Federation – strengthen interactions between research activities and biodata resources by supporting existing community networks
- FAIR data – support and develop connected biodata resources that ensure visibility, findability, usability and sustainable access to research data
- Analysis – promote tools and workflows that facilitate reliable and reproducible data analyses and help connect developers of tools, workflows and databases with user communities
- Standards – support the development and adoption of community standards and research data management best practices
- Training – support training and knowledge exchange for data management, analysis tools and workflows and biodata resources
Evaluation of BFSP-focused proposals
Proposals targeting the CMR Priority area should clearly articulate how they will address the mission and objectives outlined in the ELIXIR – Biodiversity, food security and pathogens strategy.
Financial allocation
The maximum total funding for the 2025 call is €450,000. Individual projects should aim for a total budget of up to €100,000 including indirect costs.
Contact information
For enquiries related to the Biodiversity, food security and pathogens open call specifically, please contact Bfsp-coleads@elixir-europe.org.
We believe the future of cellular and molecular research lies in integrating diverse, heterogeneous and multimodal data – from sequence-based data such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, to structural information, image data, and more – to unravel the complex mechanisms of life. This Priority area is set to achieve the vision of unifying cellular and molecular research through integrated data via a set of key objectives.
- Capture the full analytical journey: Moving beyond the data management challenges and solutions, we will aim to capture researchers' analytical strategies and workflows that closely complement and build on multimodal data. This will enable researchers to not only access data, but also understand how it was generated and analysed, facilitating reuse and accelerating discovery.
- Foster interoperability, access and collaboration in data: Relying on the robust data standards and resources provided by the wider ELIXIR community, as well as the respective tools and services, we will support and facilitate the development of solutions that seamlessly integrate multimodal data across different platforms and institutions. This will foster a collaborative environment where researchers can leverage the collective power of multimodal analysis.
- Empower researchers: Capacity building across Nodes is a key priority in CMR. As such, we will ensure that the community members across Nodes will have access to training resources, empowering researchers of all levels to navigate and use the integrated data landscape. Moreover, we aim to support active involvement in competitive project proposals on a European level.
- Pave the way for AI: Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have emerged as a key technology with a clear impact in cellular and molecular research. We will directly support trustworthy and FAIR ML in ELIXIR, by supporting the development of services and infrastructure to access, deposit, share and reuse ML models across the wider community.
Evaluation of CMR-focussed proposals
Proposals targeting the CMR Priority area should clearly articulate how they will address the mission and objectives outlined in the ELIXIR - Cellular and molecular research strategy.
Financial allocation
The maximum total funding for the 2025 call is €300,000. Individual projects should aim for a total budget of up to €100,000 including indirect costs.
Contact information
For enquiries related to the CMR open call specifically, please contact cmr-coleads@elixir-europe.org.
The following briefly describes the layout and format of the Expression of Interest form – full details can be found in the submission system.
Priority area selection
- Cellular and molecular research (CMR)
- Biodiversity, food security and pathogens (BFSP)
Project lead(s)
- Up to two leads allowed (both must be ELIXIR Members)
- Project leads cannot be changed between the EoI and final submission
- For each Lead, provide:
- Name
- Institutional email
- ORCiD
- Affiliation (institute, Node)
Project details
- Title (max 25 words):
- Abstract (max 100 words): Summarise project, challenge(s) addressed and relevance to the selected Priority area
- Project outputs (max 150 words): List and briefly describe only the key technical outputs your project aims to deliver (e.g. services, datasets, standards)
- Intended duration (number of months):
- Affiliated ELIXIR Communities (max two):
- Key references (optional): max five DOIs
Preliminary list of participants
Subject to change – participants/institutes can be removed/included in the final submission
- Name
- Email (institutional)
- Affiliation