ELIXIR is an initiative that aims to build a sustainable European infrastructure for biological information, supporting biological research and its transfer to medical practice, the environment, bioindustries and society. Its main goal is to bring together leading European laboratories and data centers to help coordinate the collection, quality control and storage of the large volumes of biological data produced through life sciences experiments.
ELIXIR is creating an infrastructure, a sort of road network, that integrates research data from around Europe and ensures uninterrupted service that is easily accessible to all. This way, easy access to these rapidly growing databases will facilitate discoveries that will benefit humanity.
The main services of the initiative, most of which are carried out by the various nodes, include sources of data, tools, computation, rules development and skills training. It is thus a pan-European research infrastructure for biological information that provides the necessary facilities for life sciences researchers.
In December 2014, Montserrat Vendrell, director of the Barcelona Institute for Science and Technology (BIST), was appointed to the ELIXIR Industry Advisory Committee (IAC), an intergovernmental organization based at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). The Industry Advisory Committee was created to bring to ELIXIR top-notch strategic counsel from independent experts, including SMEs, suppliers and editors.
