ELIXIR MoU now has signature of 13 countries and EMBL
Hinxton, 3 September 2012 – Czech Republic is the latest country to pledge its commitment to participate in ELIXIR, the emerging research infrastructure for biological information. ELIXIR is a pan-European initiative that will harness and build upon expertise in countries across Europe to provide a suite of first-class data services to the global community of life scientists. Once ELIXIR is operational, scientists will be able to access fully integrated services provided through ELIXIR partners, which will in turn help to open up new scientific exploration in medicine, biotechnology, food, agriculture and biodiversity.
The Czech Republic has made significant investments in science base in recent years and ELIXIR presents an excellent opportunity for its scientific community to engage in bioinformatics at the highest level. “The benefit to the Czech Republic of participating in ELIXIR is twofold:” said Jiří Vondrášek, Head of Bioinformatics at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, “The international support and expertise that will be forthcoming in integrating the Czech ELIXIR services will be invaluable; and the unique resources and services we will contribute to ELIXIR will have far more international exposure being part of a pan-European initiative than they might otherwise have. Our membership will be beneficial for researchers locally and internationally”.
Professor Søren Brunak, Chair of the ELIXIR Interim Board, said: “The challenge of the data deluge is simply too great for any one country to solve alone and I am delighted that Czech Republic has signed the ELIXIR MoU. It joins a large number of countries that have agreed to take part in this important initiative. I look forward to working with the Czech bioinformatics community as their expertise is integrated into the ELIXIR infrastructure.” The Czech community has already begun working on its proposal to host an ELIXIR Node.
Czech Republic joins the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and 12 other nations in signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) supporting ELIXIR. Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom have already pledged their support. Over the coming months these countries will work towards developing a legally binding International Consortium Agreement (ICA), which would come into force, hopefully in 2013.
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Contact:
Lindsey Crosswell
Head of External Relations, EMBL-EBI
Wellcome Trust Genome Campus
Hinxton, Cambridge UK