ELIXIR releases strategic visions for two scientific priority areas

ELIXIR has published strategy documents for two of the scientific priority areas defined in the Scientific Programme 2024-28: cellular and molecular research, and biodiversity, food security and pathogens.

Supporting data-driven cellular and molecular research has been a focus for ELIXIR since its launch in 2013. Biodiversity, food security and pathogens is a new priority area bringing together related topics with broad impact on society and the planet.

The strategies both follow extensive stakeholder consultation and outline key objectives during the current Scientific Programme. They provide each priority area with a clear direction to follow, enabling efficient and impactful use of ELIXIR Scientific Programme funding, for example, through open calls. By aligning activities across ELIXIR, they also ensure efforts are strategically focused and coordinated toward national and international funding opportunities.

A summary of the objectives of each strategy is given below, further information can be found in the associated documents.

Cellular and molecular research

The cellular and molecular research priority area aims to address complex challenges in cellular and molecular research by developing innovative solutions for data management, analysis and sharing. The strategy defines four objectives:

1. Analytical journeys – capture and connect analytical strategies and workflows, particularly for multimodal data, to support reuse and accelerate discovery
2. Interoperability and collaboration – promote integration of multimodal data across platforms and institutions by building on ELIXIR standards, tools and services
3. Capacity building – empower researchers across Nodes through training, resources and support for project proposals
4. Trustworthy AI – support the development of services and infrastructure for accessing, sharing and reusing machine learning models across ELIXIR

Biodiversity, food security and pathogens

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:

1. Federation - strengthen interactions between research activities and biodata resources by supporting existing community networks
2. FAIR data - support and develop connected biodata resources that ensure visibility, findability, usability and sustainable access to research data
3. Analysis - promote tools and workflows that facilitate reliable and reproducible data analyses and help connect developers of tools, workflows and databases with user communities
4. Standards - support the development and adoption of community standards and research data management best practices
5. Training - support training and knowledge exchange for data management, analysis tools and workflows and biodata resources