Italy is the latest country to sign the ELIXIR Consortium Agreement and join ELIXIR as Member, following the ELIXIR Board’s approval of Italy's application.

The ELIXIR Node in Italy is organised as a Joint Research Unit, coordinated by the National Research Council (CNR). It brings together 13 partners, including seven Italian universities and four High Performance Computing (HPC) centres.

The Italian bioinformatics community has a strong track record in human, animal and plant genomics and has been involved in several genome projects (for example the Sardinians genome project, the domestic horse and the grape and peach genomes). Other areas of focus for the Node include metagenomics, epigenomics, proteomics and bioinformatics training. ELIXIR will in turn also benefit from the experience and expertise of Italy's four High Performance Computing centres in managing HPC services in various scientific fields.

Prof. Graziano Pesole from the University of Bari and the ELIXIR Italy Head of Node said: "Our goal is to drive the development of bioinformatics resources in Italy and integrate them with our European partners across ELIXIR. We are looking forward to sharing our expertise and resources with ELIXIR partners and bringing them closer to the European research community."

Italy is the 16th ELIXIR Member, and most recent country to join following France, Spain, and Belgium.

Read more about ELIXIR Italy: https://www.elixir-europe.org/about/elixir-italy