Finland joins European ELIXIR Consortium
Finland has signed a Consortium Agreement setting up a European Life Science Infrastructure for Biological Information, ELIXIR. The Consortium collectively unites member countries and inter-governmental organisations life science centres and all the expertise they manage into one European distributed research infrastructure.
To date, the member countries of the Consortium of research infrastructures are the Netherlands, Israel, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Estonia and the United Kingdom as well as the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). Krista Kiuru, Minister of Education, Science and Communications, signed the Agreement on 1 September 2014, making Finland the 11th country to join the Consortium.
ELIXIR enhances the availability, collective use, archiving and maintenance of life science and medical research data and results. It also helps develop new ways to use data more effectively in universities, research institutions and to a growing extent also in business enterprises. The IT Centre for Science (CSC), operating under the remit of the Ministry of Education and Culture, serves as Finlands national ELIXIR centre.
In Finland, ELIXIR forms part of a national collective that also includes the Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI) and the European Infrastructure for Transnational Medicine (EATRIS), organisations that Finland joined in 2013. ELIXIR brings efficient information management and computation services to this formation. This collection of research infrastructures offers, both on the national and European platform, excellent potential for scientific breakthroughs to help patients, for advancing personalised medicine and for creating innovations in both health care and bioinformatics.
Within the context of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) research infrastructures roadmap and the national research infrastructures roadmap and by drawing on the recommendations of the Finnish Research Infrastructure Committee (FIRI Committee) of the Academy of Finland, Finland paved the way for joining ELIXIR.
http://www.csc.fi/csc/ajankohtaista/uutiset/elixir-konsortiosopimus
http://www.biomedinfra.fi/
http://www.aka.fi/fi/A/Ohjelmat-ja-yhteistyo/Tutkimusinfrastruktuuri/
http://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/index_en.cfm?pg=synergies
Inquiries:
Ms Marja-Liisa Niemi, tel. +358 (0)295 3 30228, [email protected];
Mr Petteri Kauppinen, tel. +358 (0)295 3 30147, [email protected];
Head of ELIXIR Finland Mr Tommi Nyrönen, tel. +358 (0)50 3819 511, [email protected];
Senior Science Adviser, Ms Merja Särkioja, tel. +358 (0)295 3 35111, [email protected]