Introduction by ELIXIR Director

With the successful completion of the ELIXIREXCELERATE project and the first Scientific Programme (2014-2018), we have entered a new stage in ELIXIR development.

In 2019 we began the implementation of the second Scientific Programme (2019-23) and launched 28 new technical and scientific projects worth €6 million. These new projects lay the foundation for achieving our strategic objectives. They will strengthen the portfolio of our existing services and develop new ones that will address some of the bottlenecks in bioinformatics, such as responsible sharing of sensitive data or the reproducibility and reusability of bioinformatics workflows.

In this report you will learn how we progressed towards this goal and about the first preliminary results of our activities achieved in 2019 (p. 15). It will also give you an overview of the breadth of the activities in our ELIXIR Nodes (p. 36), in our Platforms and Communities (p. 21).

When I look back on our activities in 2019, they all have one common denominator - our effort to support and facilitate scientific collaboration at every level and across domains, countries and continents. This includes integrating experts from new Nodes into our Platforms, linking up ELIXIR Nodes through Implementation Studies, connecting teams through Staff Exchange projects or connecting experts worldwide through our partnership with Global Alliance for Genomics and Health.

In 2019 we launched new initiatives to support collaboration between industry and academia (the ELIXIR Knowledge Exchange Scheme and Bioinformatics Industry Forum, p. 52) and firmly established the ELIXIR Biohackathon. Its second edition was held in November 2019 in Paris and brought together over 100 researchers and developers, including from industry (p 16).

Looking forward, I believe that enabling collaboration is the cornerstone for our success. As we enter the second Scientific Programme, I am keen to build on our previous successes and further strengthen collaboration with our partners in Europe and globally.

ELIXIR Director