ELIXIR's International Strategy describes what ELIXIR is doing to reinforce its global significance and impact. Here, the term ‘International’ means ‘beyond Europe’, with ‘Europe’ being defined as the countries of the European Research Area (ERA).
The Strategy is framed around four main objectives:
- scale-up the international user base of ELIXIR’s Services,
- improve bioinformatics services by promoting global standards, data-sharing and data annotation,
- expand international Membership in, and collaborations with, ELIXIR, and
- reinforce recognition of ELIXIR as an infrastructure of global significance, and a trusted partner.
The work of ELIXIR is articulated around the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and relates strongly to the European Green Deal. Research infrastructures indeed play a critical role in supporting bioinformatics applications in the fields of health (e.g. personalised medicine, epidemics monitoring), food security (e.g. aquaculture, crop development), human capital (e.g. digital skills), and the environment (e.g. biodiversity knowledge, pollution remediation), which have significant societal and economic benefits.
The ELIXIR Hub can financially support strategically-relevant interactions with organisations beyond Europe, through existing funding instruments such as the ELIXIR Staff Exchange projects and ELIXIR Travel grants. Related to this, ELIXIR and the Australian BioCommons signed a Collaboration Strategy in 2020 (news item), and ELIXIR partners are encouraged to contact info [at] elixir-europe.org to discuss collaboration topics and ideas.
Further international collaborations are listed here.
