ELIXIR Annual report 2015 by ELIXIR

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

ELIXIR Scientific Programme 2014

With special thanks to all of those who contributed to the development of ELIXIR infrastructure in 2015, most notably heads of Nodes, platform and use case leads, Technical and Training coordinators and members of the various working groups.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Table of Contents Opening remarks by Robert-Jan Smits, Director-General, DG Research and Innovation, European Commission

Foreword by Niklas Blomberg, Director of ELIXIR

ELIXIR Technical Platforms: Our framework for service delivery

Data 6 7 Interoperability Tools 8 9 Compute Training

ELIXIR Use Cases

Human data

Rare diseases

Marine metagenomics

Plant sciences

Highlights from ELIXIR Nodes

ELIXIR Members and Observers

ELIXIR Member updates

ELIXIR Observer updates

Accelerating implementation: ELIXIR-EXCELERATE

Highlights from Technical Coordinators

Industry engagement: ELIXIR Innovation and SME programme

Timeline: 2015 highlights

Scientific Advisory Board

International collaboration

Capacity building

Scientific collaborations - EU grants

Collaborations with biomedical research infrastructures

Activities at the ELIXIR Hub

ELIXIR Committees

Financial data

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Opening remarks I have been delighted to watch how successfully ELIXIR has progressed throughout 2015. From the start of two major Horizon 2020-funded projects–ELIXIREXCELERATE and CORBEL–to recognition by the G7 Group of Senior Officials (GSO), 2015 marked the year that ELIXIR moved full swing into its operational phase and earned recognition on the global stage. What has been as equally pleasing to note is how ELIXIR’s progress matches so closely the priorities of the new Research Commissioner: Open Science, Open Innovation and Open to the World. To be able to realise the benefits of Open Science, it is crucial for Europe to have a sustainable, interconnected infrastructure for life-science data so that the data created from national and EU research projects can be stored safely and made available for re-use. The progress ELIXIR has made with its Member States and the creation of national centres for excellence (ELIXIR Nodes) demonstrates that in the life sciences, this is well on track. For Europe to transition to a knowledge-based economy, we need a strong industrial sector and maximum commercial use of our research infrastructures. In the life sciences, companies are already major users of bioinformatics services, and the progress ELIXIR has made through its Innovation and SME programme has shown how it is possible to engage companies as service users effectively. Internationally, ELIXIR has been recognised by the G7’s Group of Senior Officials as a research infrastructure of global potential, and I am confident that as ELIXIR rolls out its international strategy it will be at the forefront of defining and implementing international standards for data exchange, interoperability and training.

Robert-Jan Smits, Director-General, DG Research and Innovation, European Commission

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Robert-Jan Smits

Foreword Boosting the implementation of ELIXIR services, strengthening our infrastructure capacities in ELIXIR Nodes and building the foundations for sustainable life-science data resources–those were ELIXIR’s main goals for 2015. This report shows our progress towards achieving these goals: what we achieved over the past year and what lies ahead.

Boosting service delivery In 2015 ELIXIR entered a new phase, expanding its technical and service delivery and preparing for future growth. I would like to thank the Technical Platform and Use Case leaders, and indeed the whole ELIXIR community, for their enthusiasm and hard work in bringing to fruition five technical platforms (Tools, Data, Compute, Interoperability and Training) and four use cases (Plant sciences, Marine metagenomics, Rare diseases and Human data). The platforms and use cases are now fully operational and form a solid foundation for our service delivery. The Horizon 2020 ELIXIR-EXCELERATE grant, which started in September 2015, is fully embedded into ELIXIR technical platforms and use cases. The project will accelerate the implementation of the ELIXIR scientific programme and integrate ELIXIR bioinformatics resources into a coherent portfolio of infrastructure services. In 2015 the Training Platform rolled out its ELIXIR Software and Data Carpentry Pilot Programme, which trained over 200 researchers. The Human data Use Case team started the Beacon project, a collaboration with the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH). The Marine metagenomics Use Case successfully completed a pilot project to harmonise ELIXIR’s metagenomics pipeline, which is run jointly by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and ELIXIR Norway.

Welcome, new members At the beginning of 2015 ELIXIR had 12 Members and six Observers. We welcomed three new members during the year: France, Spain and Belgium, which completed the ratification process and became fully integrated into ELIXIR activities. Italy and Slovenia completed their preparatory work in 2015 to become Members in early 2016. Ireland joined ELIXIR as an Observer and began the process of establishing its national Node. ELIXIR also developed a collaboration with the German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure (de.NBI), which will pave the way for Germany’s full membership in ELIXIR.

Niklas Blomberg I believe that the collaboration among the growing number of ELIXIR Members will strengthen both our national Nodes and ELIXIR as a whole, and will bring real benefits to the lifescience community.

A global infrastructure Science is international, and ELIXIR’s reach extends beyond Europe. We started the first collaborations with our US counterpart, the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) initiative in 2015. We strengthened our ties with bioinformatics communities in Australia and Canada, and I visited both countries to discuss closer collaboration. ELIXIR’s global reach was recognised by the “Group of Seven” (G7). The Progress Report published by the G7 Group of Senior Officials categorised ELIXIR as a global infrastructure with a potential for collaboration with countries across the globe.

Looking ahead Our progress in 2015 laid the groundwork for expanding ELIXIR's portfolio of services, which will bring real benefits to the research community. Our priorities for 2016 are to provide effective services to life-science researchers in Europe and globally, to build bioinformatics expertise and capacities in our national Nodes, and to bring these together in a coherent, joined-up infrastructure. I am impressed and pleased to see what we have all achieved in such a short time. With such a strong start, I eagerly await many new developments as our implementation progresses.

Niklas Blomberg, Director of ELIXIR ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Technical Platforms: Our framework for service delivery The ELIXIR Platforms comprise Data, Tools, Interoperability, Compute and Training, forming the basic operational units within ELIXIR. They bring together resources and expertise from the ELIXIR Nodes and provide a framework for the delivery of our infrastructure services.

range of mechanisms, from Hub-funded activities, such as implementation studies, to European grants, such as ELIXIREXCELERATE and CORBEL. The platforms, formally set up in June 2015 by the ELIXIR Heads of Nodes Committee, established their structure and leadership and developed roadmaps for their activities. These were reviewed by the ELIXIR Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) in December 2015. With its platforms now fully operational, ELIXIR is equipped to expand its technical delivery.

The overall scope and objectives of the platforms are defined in the ELIXIR Scientific Programme 2014-2018. The activities carried out by platforms are funded through a

Structure of ELIXIR activities in 2015: Technical platforms for compute, data, tools and interoperability complemented by use cases for marine metagenomics, rare diseases, human data and plants sciences.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Data: Sustaining Europe’s life science data infrastructure The ELIXIR Data Platform brings together Europe’s life science data resources and drives their integration and sustainability. The main goals of the ELIXIR Data Platform are to: • F ormalise the indicators and quality criteria for ELIXIR Core Data resources across Europe; • P romote excellence in resource development and operation through spreading best practice; • I nform life-cycle management of resources, so that they can continue to form a reliable foundation for lifescience research projects; • I ncrease the sustainability of curated resources through literature–data integration and resource cross-linking. ELIXIR Core Data Resources are defined as a set of European data resources that are of fundamental importance to the broad life science community and the long-term preservation of biological data. They provide complete collections of generic value to the life sciences and tend to be well known in their field, with high levels of scientific quality and service. The objectives of this platform are to develop indicators for these key bioinformatics resources and contribute to their long-term sustainability.

Jo McEntyre, EMBL-EBI and Christine Durinx, SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics

2015 highlights: • I nitiated discussions about the process of identifying ELIXIR Core Data Resources and delivered a first draft to the ELIXIR SAB (December 2015), with the final report scheduled for 2016; • D rafted a set of indicators that reflect the multiple facets of data resources, and submitted it for review by the ELIXIR SAB (December 2015), with the report on qualitative and quantitative indicators to be published in 2016; • W rapped up the pilot project for integrating repositories for mass-spectrometry proteomics data from ELIXIR Sweden (BILS) with the ProteomeXchange consortium (EMBL-EBI), demonstrating the potential of distributed data storage and replication. This project explored the possibilities of connecting national datastorage services with international repositories through the EUDAT infrastructure. It also showed the potential of collaboration among research infrastructures and e-infrastructures for optimising large-scale data management, and helped improve the evaluation of technical requirements for such federated systems.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Interoperability : Integration of data and services The ELIXIR Interoperability Platform is developing a framework to support people and machines in the discovery, access, integration and analysis of biological data. This platform implements the guiding principles for ‘Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable’ (FAIR) data, working in partnership with a range of international initiatives, from community grassroots endeavours to governmental programmes such as BD2K. The interoperability domain is large, complex and fragmented. To make meaningful progress, the platform focuses on specific issues and use cases to improve services where gaps are identified. In contrast to the other ELIXIR technical platforms, users of the Interoperability Platform are almost exclusively those who build infrastructure and tools.

Carole Goble, ELIXIR UK

The primary goals of the ELIXIR Interoperability Platform are to: • Deliver interoperability services that underpin ELIXIR use cases, technical platforms and applications; • I dentify and promote interoperability best practices and policies for data providers and data integrators.

2015 highlights: • E stablished contacts and collaboration with partner initiatives (BioCADDIE, and BioSharing), including external liaisons and working groups;

Barend Mons, ELIXIR Netherlands

• D eveloped platform management structure and communication tools; • S tarted to draft work plans for the Identifiers and Services working groups, in preparation for the 2016 review of existing implementation services and interoperability guidelines; • O rganised a series of 'Bring Your Own Data' (BYOD) workshops and developed BYOD guidelines and training materials; • I n the context of ELIXIR’s participation in the Research Data Alliance (RDA), a global forum to enable open data across disciplines, technologies and countries, established an ELIXIR Bridging Force Interest Group to connect with groups working on agricultural data, Big Data analysis, federated identity management, marine data, structural biology, toxicogenomics and data publishing. Within RDA, ELIXIR contributed knowledge and solutions to challenges relating to sensitive data in the life sciences.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Helen Parkinson, EMBL-EBI

Tools: Services and connectors to drive access and exploitation The ELIXIR Tools Platform supports accessability and discoverability of bioinformatics tools and ‘bottom-up’ community efforts to benchmark and enhance their scientific quality. The cornerstone of this platform is the ELIXIR Tools and Data Services Registry (bio.tools), a discovery portal for data and analysis tools. The registry is curated through a series of community-driven hackathons, knowledge-exchange workshops and cross-domain strategy workshops.

Søren Brunak, ELIXIR Denmark

The main goals of the ELIXIR Tools Platform are to: • P rovide tools to help end-users find, understand and compare the resources they need in their research; • S upport resource providers and developers to contribute to an emerging, globally distributed biocurator network.

2015 highlights • L aunched the ELIXIR Tools and Data Services Registry run by ELIXIR Denmark; • O rganised five hackathons (two in Denmark, one in the Netherlands, Czech Republic, and Estonia), which resulted in over 70,000 annotations and over 2,000 entries in the registry. The registry now contains over 2,300 entries from over 200 contributors;

Alfonso Valencia, ELIXIR Spain

• P ublished two articles describing different aspects of the registry in peer-reviewed scientific journals including Nucleic Acids Research (November 2015).

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Compute: Access, exchange and storage The ELIXIR Compute Platform aims to develop and help implement geographically and organisationally distributed cloud, compute, storage and authentication/access services. It collaborates closely with e-infrastructures such as GÉANT, EUDAT and EGI as well as translational, biobanking and imaging infrastructures to facilitate access to effective services for secure access and data exchange.

2015 highlights:

Tommi Nyrönen, ELIXIR Finland

• P ublished a reference document, Technical Services Architecture for Supporting Life-Science Research, which resulted from a workshop on mapping ELIXIR’s use cases to its technical platforms (Amsterdam, the Netherlands, March 2015). The document identifies technical aspects of the use cases and proposes a series of 27 policy and technical recommendations concerning the strategic objectives of ELIXIR’s compute services. • W orked on developing the ELIXIR Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI), in parallel with the GÉANT-led Horizon 2020 Authentication and Authorisation Research and Collaboration (AARC) project. The ELIXIR intranet, launched in December 2015, was the first service to use the ELIXIR AAI.

Luděk Matyska, ELIXIR Czech Republic

Steven Newhouse, EMBL-EBI

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Training: Professional skills for managing and exploiting data The mission of the ELIXIR Training Platform is to establish an interactive, ELIXIR-wide training community to deliver ELIXIR-related training across Europe. ELIXIR Training aims to provide developers, researchers and trainers within the ELIXIR Nodes with the skills to effectively exploit the data, tools, standards and compute infrastructure offered by ELIXIR. The platform also focuses on researchers in the ELIXIR use cases and topics identified as training gaps. The Training Platform activities align with and build on national training activities in ELIXIR Nodes. The ELIXIR Training Coordinators Group is composed of training coordinators from ELIXIR Nodes.

Chris Ponting,

Patricia Palagi,

ELIXIR UK

SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics

Celia van Gelder,

Rita Hendricusdottir,

ELIXIR Netherlands

ELIXIR UK

The main goals of the ELIXIR Training Platform are to: • B uild a sustainable training infrastructure for the ELIXIR community consisting of a training portal for sharing training content and events (TeSS), relevant e-learning solutions, and a developers’ forum; • I ncrease the number of trainers (training capacity building) with a dedicated Train the Trainer programme; • D evelop good training practices and guidelines, standards, metrics and evaluation systems; • D evelop and deliver training to researchers, developers and infrastructure operators and trainers in topics selected as gaps within the ELIXIR community and in the ELIXIR use cases.

2015 highlights • O rganised hackathon 'Best practices for training in Next Generation Sequencing Analysis', Norwich, UK; • S tarted the development of the Virtual Coffee Room, a forum for communicating training needs and sharing technical solutions (launch planned for 2016); • L iaised with ELIXIR platforms, use cases and partner initiatives, such as RItrain, U.S. Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) and RDA-CODATA; • L aunched the TeSS portal for sharing training resources collected by ELIXIR Nodes and third-party providers (production version planned for 2016); • W ith the Global Organisation for Bioinformatics Learning, Education and Training (GOBLET), published a Joint Training Strategy (May);

• O rganised two joint GOBLET/ ELIXIR workshops (in Ljubljana, Slovenia and Cape Town, South Africa) to develop guidelines for e-Learning in bioinformatics (ELIXIR white paper on e-learning to publish in 2016); • C o-organised an education workshop and presented at ISMB in Dublin, Ireland. Co-organised a workshop at the Galaxy Community Conference in Norwich, UK • O rganised eleven Software and Data Carpentry (SWC/ DC) workshops in ELIXIR Nodes to introduce Software and Data Carpentry’s curriculum and training model to ELIXIR. The workshops trained around 240 lifescience researchers from 13 ELIXIR Nodes. In addition, it created a pool of new SWC/DC instructors within ELIXIR, which will continue to grow in the future. researchers and trainers from 13 ELIXIR Nodes.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Use Cases ELIXIR Use Cases link the technical activities taking place in ELIXIR to the real needs of user communities in the life sciences. They represent designated application areas, and serve to both demonstrate the impact of services and activities run by ELIXIRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s technical platforms and provide the context for scientific questions that must be accommodated by the ELIXIR infrastructure. In preparation for the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE project, the ELIXIR Heads of Node Committee identified four highimpact exemplar Use Cases:

Human data Rare diseases Marine metagenomics Plant sciences In 2015, these ELIXIR Use Cases established their organisation and governance structures and developed their work plans.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Use Case: Human data As sequencing becomes increasingly relevant to medicine, the demand for secure transfer, storage and analysis tools for human biomedical data consented for research has risen substantially. The Human Data Use Case brings together ELIXIR’s experts from partnering Nodes to develop a long-term management policy for human data, and to provide standardised tools for data discovery and access.

Arcadi Navarro, ELIXIR Spain

The supporting infrastructure and services developed by this use case will allow the producers of data to focus on their unique areas of data generation and analysis expertise, confident that they can rely on ELIXIR to provide sustainable infrastructure for their data storage (e.g. for ‘omics data), coordination and distribution needs within appropriate legal frameworks. Ilkka Lappalainen, ELIXIR Human Data Coordinator, initiated work on ELIXIR’s Human Data strategy in 2015. This involved developing new activities to support pilot projects, and building collaborations with external partners to understand their long-term data-management needs. TraIT (Translational research IT) is a project by the Dutch Center for Translational Molecular Medicine (CTMM) to implement an IT infrastructure for translational biomedical research. In 2015 ELIXIR initiated a collaborative project with TraIT with two main goals: (1) to connect TraIT’s data analyses platform and the data portal TranSMART with the European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA), a joint project between EMBL-EBI and the CRG in Barcelona; and (2) to enable the Dutch researchers to use the EGA as the longterm storage for raw data from all TraIT projects. Once this project is completed, the TraIT data stored in EGA will be available on demand to the TraIT researchers for further analysis in a cloud service, using the Galaxy workflow. OncoTrack, an Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI) project pioneering the use of large-scale genomics to improve the early diagnosis of colon cancer, began working with ELIXIR on a joint feasibility project to explore options for the provision of long-term storage and data-discovery services for data generated within the project. ELIXIR will help OncoTrack store and manage the research and clinical data it generates by ensuring it is deposited safely and securely in the EGA, and ensuring that OncoTrack data are released only to bona fide researchers following an access review by the Data Access Committee.

Justin Paschall, EMBL-EBI

Lighting beacons: A collaboration with the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health ‘Beacons’ provide a single point of access to datasets that are available through many participating institutions. In 2015, ELIXIR initiated the ELIXIR Beacon project with the GA4GH to provide data-discovery services for genomics that balance efficient data sharing and data protection. The goal of the project is to provide consent-based access to genomic data in the EGA and national resources by implementing GA4GH Beacons that will scale to support data discovery across all the ELIXIR Data Nodes. Designed to be technically simple so that they can be implemented widely, Beacons represent an important step towards collaborative, responsible sharing of human genomic data in Europe.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Use Case: Rare diseases The main objective of the Rare Disease Use Case is to support the development of new therapies for rare diseases. This use case interacts directly with data generators and curators, researchers and clinicians, SMEs and the pharmaceutical industry. The main goals of the ELIXIR Rare Disease Use Case are to: •

Build an ELIXIR portfolio of data resources and analysis tools critical for the rare disease research community;

•

Implement a technical framework for the comparison and standardisation of services useful for this community;

•

Arrange training courses, workshops and hackathons to train rare disease researchers to use ELIXIR services and capture the specific service requirements of this community.

Ivo Gut, ELIXIR Spain

2015 highlights: Access to multiple biological and clinical resources, without too many barriers, is of critical importance in the rare diseases field. In 2015 ELIXIR launched a joint initiative with RD-CONNECT, Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure – the Netherlands (BBMRI-NL) and BBMRI-ERIC to create a federated infrastructure for access to rare-disease repositories throughout Europe. Because each rare-disease field is limited in size, the single most important way for researchers to find source materials and gain new insights is to combine data across registries, biobanks and -omics databases. ELIXIR will test different technologies and find those best suited to link different resources and tools to better serve the rare disease community. This work will feed into the ELIXIREXCELERATE Rare Disease Use Case. ELIXIR Finland (CSC – IT Center for Science) began a collaboration with BBMRI, becoming the main partner and supplier of IT infrastructure services to the BBMRI national centre in Finland (BBMRI.fi). In 2015 ELIXIR Finland began to run the software that BBMRI uses (e.g. sample availability, consent register, research access management service, REMS) within 'ePouta', the secure cloud offered by ELIXIR Finland.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Marco Roos, ELIXIR Netherlands

Use Case: Marine metagenomics The ELIXIR Use Case on Marine metagenomics will develop a sustainable metagenomics infrastructure to enhance research and innovation within the marine domain. This use case aims to expand the potential of metagenomics for research and industry while addressing challenges in standardisation, develop marine reference databases and deploy bioinformatics tools in cloud environments. The specific objectives for the ELIXIR Marine Use Case are to: •

Develop and implement selected standards for the marine domain;

•

Develop and implement databases specific to marine metagenomics;

•

Evaluate and implement tools and pipelines for metagenomics analyses;

•

Develop a search engine for the interrogation of marine metagenomics datasets;

•

Organise training workshops for end users.

2015 highlights: •

Successfully completed a pilot study to gain deeper insights into challenges related to marine metagenomics, and to harmonise existing metagenomics pipelines (i.e. the EMBL-EBI Metagenomics portal and META-pipe, operated by ELIXIR Norway);

•

In the context of the pilot project, explored the potential of available technologies for establishing a sustainable research and e-infrastructure for marine metagenomics to help manage the rapid expansion of metagenomics data. For example, in 2015 alone EMBLEBI Metagenomics analysed three trillion nucleotides– an increase of 98% over the previous year;

•

Gained a better understanding of how to transfer and replicate metagenomics data, optimise algorithms used in metagenomics pipelines and assess the need for hardware to address computing and storage capacity issues.

Rob Finn, EMBL-EBI

Nils Peder Willassen, ELIXIR Norway

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Use Case: Plant sciences The Plant sciences Use Case (Genotype and phenotype in crop and tree species) is developing an infrastructure to facilitate genotype–phenotype analyses for crop and tree species, using standard-compliant services to allowing integrated querying of potentially dispersed data. The main objectives of this use case are to: •

Design, implement and recommend standards (minimum information, vocabularies, and file formats) for the representation of genotypic and phenotypic data, through coordination with the crop and forest tree research communities.

•

Make data discoverable and interoperable (in line with the FAIR data principles specified in the Interoperability Platform) through the use of common APIs, through which any researcher can advertise the availability of their data;

•

Annotate and submit key exemplar datasets to relevant public archives;

•

Develop re-usable modules for the visualisation of these data;

•

Disseminate best practice and supporting tools to national projects and researchers.

Priorities for 2016 are the annotation of initial data sets, and the investigations of relevant ontologies and tools, resulting in the establishment of minimum information guidelines and the specification for further annotation and API development.

2015 highlights: • E stablished working groups to commence work on metadata representation, the development of standardised APIs, the definition of biomaterials, and use cases for genotype-phenotype data. • B egan discussion of requirements and approaches with the ELIXIR platforms.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Paul Kersey, EMBL-EBI

Celia Miguel, ELIXIR Portugal

Highlights from ELIXIR Nodes Joint Nordic services for human data: The Tryggve project In 2015 the ELIXIR Nodes in Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden joined forces to develop IT services for human data. Supported by the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC), the work has been carried out in the Tryggve project (https://wiki.neic.no/tryggve), which aims to provide researchers with a trusted set of services to store and process sensitive biomedical data across Nordic countries based on the capacities of the ELIXIR Nodes. Ultimately, Tryggve aims to produce solutions that are applicable for the whole ELIXIR community. Improving the mobility of sensitive, human-based data,users and tools amongst ELIXIR countries requires that human data can be moved beyond national borders. Ideally, the processing tools used for analysis would also be moved easily to any system the user wants to utilise. In 2015 the Tryggve worked on the development of secure processing environments, and achieved technical advances that support joint use of these environments amongst the partner countries. The secure computing systems include TSD2.0 at USIT, ELIXIR Norway; Mosler at NBIS, ELIXIR Sweden; ePouta at CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd, ELIXIR Finland; and Computerome at Denmark Technical University (DTU), ELIXIR Denmark. Tryggve project partners also worked actively on enhancing the portability of tools, notably using Docker Containers, and on facilitating secure data transfer between countries. The Tryggve project supports a research use case concerning genetic and environmental risk factors in schizophrenia. This research has combined both genetic and environmental data from several countries to create larger sample size, enriching the research. In 2016, the Tryggve project plans to set up additional collaborations with the Nordic life-science community.

New secure cloud in ELIXIR Finland ELIXIR Finland (www.elixir-finland.org), run by the CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd (www.csc.fi), provides training and IT e-Infrastructure services for researchers in the life sciences. These services are based on cloud and storage resources, with integrated computational access to very large biological data resources. ELIXIR Finland was officially inaugurated on 4 May 2015 at the Museum of Natural History in Helsinki. The event brought together life scientists, national funders and policymakers from all over Europe, providing an opportunity

to introduce the full scope of ELIXIR Finland activities and its service portfolio. The event spotlighted the ePouta cloud, a new service of CSC – IT Center for Science. Created to handle sensitive data, ePouta is a secure compute cloud that meets high-level information security regulations. Successfully piloted in 2015 by top research centres in Finland, it was made ready for roll-out to the ELIXIR community in 2016. Together with ELIXIR Czech Republic, the Finnish Node is also leading work on the ELIXIR Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI), which will provide federated access support for ELIXIR services scheduled to launch in early 2016. ELIXIR Finland also represents ELIXIR in the CORBEL and AARC projects, as well as the proposal for an AARC2 project to develop an integrated cross-discipline AAI framework for scientific research.

Introducing ELIXIR Czech Republic ELIXIR’s Czech national Node (www.elixir-czech.org) was officially established on 4 March 2015, when representatives of 11 Czech universities and research institutes met in Prague to sign the consortium agreement. ELIXIR Czech Republic focuses on three areas, where it serves as a connection between national and European research structures: structural bioinformatics, curated databases and IT-dedicated solutions for life-science research. In collaboration with ELIXIR Finland, the Czech Node started working in 2015 on the ELIXIR AAI, providing the national Identity and Access Management system (PERUN). Along with ELIXIR Sweden, ELIXIR Czech Republic also leads ELIXIR’s Capacity Building and Node development programme to boost organisational capacity in newly formed ELIXIR Nodes, and to create an ELIXIR-wide Genome Annotation Network. In 2015 the Czech Node supported two knowledge-exchange workshops: one hosted by CEITEC in Brno, Czech Republic, and the other hosted by the Prague House in Brussels, Belgium (See Capacity Building Programme for more information). ELIXIR Czech Republic was also successful in the evaluation of the Czech research infrastructures, a project conducted by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. The Czech National Roadmap, published in October 2015, awarded ELIXIR Czech Republic a ranking of A1, indicating the highest priority for public funding in 2016-2022. It was among the three infrastructures in the biomedical sector to receive the highest priority mark.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

ELIXIR Members and Observers (as of 31 December 2015) Members

Observers

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Expanding membership of ELIXIR

Members

Observers

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

ELIXIR Member updates Belgium

France

• R eleased five new resources for plant science: plant genomics, genome annotation, plant data mining and variant discovery;

• T rained over 2,000 people in over 80 courses for life-science researchers and 25 courses for university students;

• O rganised and hosted a Data Carpentry workshop in Brussels (November);

• C ompleted work towards becoming an ELIXIR Member (October);

• C ompleted work towards signing the ELIXIR Consortium Agreement, becoming a full Member in November;

• W elcomed Orphanet, the European reference portal for information on rare diseases and orphan drugs, to ELIXIR France (November).

• S ecured a national grant (€200,000) to bring together the Belgian bioinformatics community and develop the Belgian ELIXIR Node.

Denmark • L aunched the ELIXIR Tools and Data Services Registry (January 2015); • H eld the first annual Danish Bioinformatics Conference, sponsored by ELIXIR Denmark (August); • M ade Computerome, ELIXIR Denmark’s supercomputer for life sciences, available to users outside Denmark; • P ublished two papers presenting the ELIXIR Tools and Data Registry in peer-reviewed journals (July, November); • H eld two hackathons: the EDAM Development & Governance and RNA Analysis (March, September); • P resented the Danish ELIXIR Node in BioZoom, a journal published by the Danish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Estonia • H eld ELIXIR’s first thematic hackathon: NextGeneration Sequencing (NGS), in Tallinn (August).

EMBL-EBI • C o-organised ELIXIR’s Software Sustainability workshop (December); • H eld two webinars to present new tools and services developed by BioMedBridges (BioSamples Database, RDF, UniChem); • R eleased five online training courses as part of BioMedBridges.

Netherlands • H eld the first Green Genetics’ Bring Your Own Data (BYOD) workshop (January); • O rganised the first BYOT (Bring Your Own Template) meeting, in association with BioMedBridges, the FAIRport initiative, BBMRI-NL and CTMM/TraIT (March); • H eld two hackathons, two webinars and one training course; • H eld the ELIXIR Innovation and SME Forum DataDriven Innovation in the Agri-Food Industries in Wageningen (March); • I ntroduced in a dedicated track at the BIoSB 2015 Conference (May); • C o-organised the Empowering Personalized Medicine & Health Research Conference in Amersfoort (November 2015); • C ongratulated Barend Mons, Head of the Dutch ELIXIR Node, on his appointment to Chair of the European Commission’s High Level Expert Group on the European Open Science Cloud; • E xpanded the Dutch ELIXIR Node, Dutch Techcentre for Life Sciences (DTLS), to include over 100 research groups in 36 partner institutions.

Norway • O rganised training activities including two workshops, ten short training courses and one university course on the effective use of the bioinformatics tools offered by ELIXIR Norway; • M ade new set of state-of-the-art analysis workflows for analysing high-throughput sequencing data available on the Norwegian e-infrastructure for Life Science; • L aunched a new collaboration with Biobank Norway on sensitive data access and management;

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

• A s part of the marine metagenomics pilot project supported by EMBL-EBI, devoted considerable efforts to exploring the potential for establishing a sustainable research and e-infrastructure for marine metagenomics to help manage the steep increase of data in this emerging area.

Portugal • I nitiated the development of a bioinformatics training programme for woody plants; • E stablished ELIXIR’s Plants Use Case as the platform co-leader alongside EMBL-EBI; • L aunched the ELIXIR Portugal website (www.elixirportugal.org); • A ppointed Professor Arlindo Oliveira as new Head of Node (June).

Spain • C ompleted work towards supporting Spain to become an ELIXIR member, resulting in Spain joining in October; • I n collaboration with Intel and Atos, organised a conference to facilitate academia–industry collaboration in bioinformatics.

Sweden • P resented the Human Protein Atlas in Science (January);

Switzerland • H osted the ELIXIR-SIB Innovation and SME Forum: Data-driven innovation in the pharma and biotech industries, in Basel (June); • H eld 41 short workshops and 11 long-block courses, training nearly 1,000 researchers. • P ublished an article in Nucleic Acid Research introducing curated resources at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (December).

Israel • C o-organised an ELIXIR e-Learning workshop in Slovenia (September).

United Kingdom • E stablished a Scientific Development Group to provide guidance on ELIXIR UK’s future development of its remit and portfolio (December); • C oordinated ELIXIR’s Software and Data Carpentry Pilot Action, a project featuring the collaboration between ELIXIR and Software and Data Carpentry; • E stablished a collaboration with NIH BD2K in interoperability, data and training; • A dministered the first international survey on the metabolomics community’s training needs; • A ppointed John Hancock, TGAC, as ELIXIR UK Node Coordinator (February).

• L aunched Pcons.net, the Protein Structure Prediction Meta Server (executed in the federated cloud of EGI); • H osted the Human Protein Atlas workshop (November); • A s part of the Tryggve project, was awarded a new grant by NeIC- NordForsk for systems development for sensitive data; • F eatured in Science and Technology (Pan European Networks Publishing) (September); • C oncluded an ELIXIR Pilot Action, featuring the integration of raw data repositories for mass spectrometry proteomics data run by ELIXIR Sweden and ProteomeXchange via the PRIDE database, in collaboration with EMBL-EBI.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

ELIXIR Observer updates Greece • L aunched two new tools: Mouse Resource Browser (MRB), providing interactive view of mouse resources available worldwide, and CuticleDB, a relational database of Arthropod cuticular proteins; • H eld the ELIXIR Greece partners’ meeting to prepare the launch of the Greek ELIXIR Node (December).

Italy • S ecured four new EU grants totaling over €500,000 for research in food and health, marine science and biodiversity; • O rganised four bioinformatics training events for lifescience researchers; • C oncluded ELIXIR Italy’s preparatory phase, joining ELIXIR as a full member in January 2016.

Ireland • J oined ELIXIR as Observer in October 2015, presently working on establishing ELIXIR’s Irish Node.

Slovenia • R eceived support from Horizon 2020 (totaling nearly €500,000) to develop the Centre of Excellence for Translational Medicine (CETM); • L aunched ELIXIR Slovenia’s eLearning Platform, including a series of hands-on tutorials; • C o-organised the SysBioMed conference in Ljubljana, in collaboration with ISBE and CASYM (June-July); • O rganised four training workshops and meetings as part of ELIXIR’s Training Platform; • C ompleted ELIXIR Slovenia’s preparatory phase at the AGM meeting in December, becoming an ELIXIR Member in February 2016.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Accelerating implementation ELIXIR-EXCELERATE ELIXIR-EXCELERATE is a major EU Horizon 2020 grant to help ELIXIR implement its Scientific Programme.

Basic facts: •

€19.8 million

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4-year project (2015-2019)

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41 partners across 17 countries

ELIXIR was invited to apply to a dedicated call within Horizon 2020 following the ESFRI and European Council’s decision in 2014 to name ELIXIR as one of Europe’s three priority new Research Infrastructures. ELIXIR-EXCELERATE represents ELIXIR’s submission to this call.

•

Start: 1 September 2015

With a budget of nearly €20 million and including well over 40 partners from ELIXIR Nodes, ELIXIR-EXCELERATE will accelerate the implementation of the ELIXIR Platforms and integrate ELIXIR bioinformatics resources into a coherent infrastructure.

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Accelerate the implementation of ELIXIR;

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Develop and connect resources and services (across ELIXIR Nodes);

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Build bioinformatics capacity across Europe (through Capacity Building and Training).

ELIXIR-EXCELERATE’s structure reflects the scientific and technical priorities set out in ELIXIR’s Scientific Programme 2014-2018. The impact of the infrastructure services delivered within the five technical Platforms established within ELIXIR (Data, Tools, Interoperability, Compute and Training) will be informed by four Use Cases: marine metagenomics, crop and forest plants, rare disease and sensitive human data. The technical and scientific activities will be complemented by a pan-European training programme, which will increase bioinformatics capacity and competency.

Overall goals:

On 10 December, the project kick-off meeting brought together over 90 representatives across ELIXIR to Cambridge, UK. Project partners presented their plans and expected outcomes for each of the project tasks, discussing challenges and actions that cut across the Work Packages. The activities and first results include a series of hackathons to expand the ELIXIR Tools and Services Registry (http:// bio.tools), establishing a common identity to access ELIXIR services (e.g. AAI), setting up the first Data Nodes (i.e. those with large data collections and databases), the first workshop on genome annotation, and activities to strengthen the ELIXIR Training programme.

Delegates at the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE kick-off meeting at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK, December 2015.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Highlights from Technical Coordinators The Technical Coordinators Group (TeCG) comprises technical experts representing each of the ELIXIR Nodes and is chaired by ELIXIR’s Chief Technical Officer, Rafael Jimenez. The group’s role is to identify challenges and existing gaps in ELIXIR’s scientific and technical aspects and coordinate the technical activities across the individual Nodes. The TeCG also explores technical opportunities and issues providing advice and recommendations to the Heads of Nodes. In 2015, the TeCG worked together with the Compute Platform on the Reference Technical Services Architecture for supporting Life Science Research, which provided strategic objectives for the Compute Platform, on ELIXIR’s AAI Strategy, and on the Storage and data transfer strategy. The TeCG also established a new Working Group for Galaxy Recommendations. Galaxy is an online platform for data-intensive biomedical research, designed for lifescience researchers who do not have extensive computer programming experience. The working group aims to collect information on the Galaxy Platform and evaluate its use across ELIXIR Nodes and its applications in ELIXIR Platforms. The Heads of Nodes Committee adopted the group’s recommendations on training, especially on technical training for Galaxy operators and service providers in ELIXIR Nodes. The TeCG launched the Software Development Best Practices Working Group to deliver guidelines on best practices and quality assessment in software development. In collaboration with the Software Sustainability Institute, the Working Group will address issues such as quality and sustainability metrics, open source policies or software licensing. The group is open to any organisation in lifescience research, especially to biomedical research infrastructures, and its objective is to find and define common aspects in software development that could be adopted across the life sciences. The kick-off meeting of this initiative took place on 14 December 2015 in Amsterdam. The main goals are to develop a white paper on best practices and quality assessment in software development in life-science and present it to the Heads of Node Committee in Autumn 2016.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Rafael Jimenez, ELIXIR Chief Technical Officer, Chair of the Technical Coordinators Group

Industry engagement ELIXIR Innovation and SME programme In 2015 the ELIXIR Innovation and SME programme expanded, holding two events in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Hosted by DTL and Wageningen University, the interactive, two-day event in March focused on datadriven innovation in the agri-food sectors. The 80 delegates included representatives from companies such as Bayer, Syngenta and FrieslandCampina; smaller plant-breeding and food companies such as Enza Zaden, Bejo Zaden and Nizo; IT companies including Microsoft; and research-intensive SMEs such as Keygene, Genetwister and EdgeLeap. Richard Finkers, Wageningen University and Research Centre commented: “I am delighted that such a large number of companies attended the meeting. This is testament to the importance of a high-quality public infrastructure for life science data. I am equally pleased that there was such deep interaction and discussion between delegates during the two days and I am confident that it will lead to further collaboration between industry and academia.” The June event, hosted by the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (ELIXIR Switzerland) and held alongside the Basel Computational Biology Conference (BC2), focused on pharma and biotech. Over 70 participants attended, representing Novartis, Sanofi, Lonza Bioscience, 4-Antibody AG, ALK, IBM, QIAGEN and many other companies. Delegates heard about many relevant services and resources and interacted with the SIB experts who run them.

"I made good connections, and expect to start several new translational bioinformatics projects as the result of the meeting.” John Castle, Senior Director, Bioinformatics; 4-Antibody AG & Agenus

Industry projects Throughout 2015, ELIXIR developed collaborations with key industry initiatives, which will continue during 2016. ELIXIR began a collaboration with the Pistoia Alliance to map the links between academia and industry. Through BioSchemas, the community-driven initiative to extend the standards within schema.org, this collaboration aims to standardise the description of content including events, training, training materials, people and organisations in the life sciences. This will ensure more effective information sharing across the sector. All of the data gathered in the project will be made available for reuse. ELIXIR and the IMI-funded OncoTrack project began to plan collaboration around the long-term storage of data. OncoTrack uses large-scale genomics to generate new data to power research that will improve the early

ELIXIR Innovation & SME forum at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

diagnosis of colon cancer. As part of the collaboration, ELIXIR will examine the provision of safe data storage and management via the European Genome-Phenome Archive. The project is scheduled to run throughout 2016.

Understanding the needs of industry ELIXIR’s Industry Advisory Committee (IAC) met for the first time in early 2015, issuing a set of high-level recommendations including the need to develop a set of core resources of industry standard and to ensure that data services within ELIXIR remain interoperable, open and sustainable.

IAC Members in 2015: •

Martin Ebeling, Hoffmann-La Roche, Switzerland

•

Anita Eliasson, Biocomputing Platforms Ltd, Finland

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Wendy Filsell, Unilever R&D, UK (Vice Chair)

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Mark Forster, Syngenta, UK (Chair)

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Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Nature Publishing Group Macmillan, UK

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Natalia Jimenez Lozano, Atos, Spain

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Claus Stie Kallesøe, Gritsystems A/S, Denmark

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Angel Pizarro, Amazon Web Services, USA

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Philippe Sanseau, GlaxoSmithKline, UK

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Montserrat Vendrell, Biocat, Spain

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Jakob de Vlieg, Bayer CropSciences Innovation Center, Belgium

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Highlights from 2015 29 January 2015 Launch of the ELIXIR Tools and Data services registry: A portal to bioinformatics resources worldwide ELIXIR’s Tools & Data Services Registry (bio.tools) provides essential information to help users find the right resource for their research. By the end of 2015 this community-driven curation effort, coordinated by ELIXIR Denmark, offered over 2,000 consistently described resources, all conforming to an emerging common standard.

4 March 2015 ELIXIR Czech Republic is established officially Representatives of 11 Czech universities and research institutes met in Prague to sign a consortium agreement setting up the Czech ELIXIR Node. ELIXIR Czech Republic include structural bioinformatics, genomics data on microorganisms and plants, and cheminformatics. With ELIXIR Finland, the Czech Node started to build an Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI) to for all ELIXIR services.

30-31 March 2015

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ELIXIR holds its first All-Hands meeting ELIXIR’s first All-Hands meeting, held in Hinxton, UK, welcomed over 150 members of ELIXIR Nodes and collaborators from partner organisations. Topics included data management plans, Node development, database metrics, human research data and training. The keynote presentation was given by Prof. Geoffrey Boulton of the University of Edinburgh.

26 February 2015

20 April 2015

11 June 2015

ELIXIR establishes its Industry Advisory Committee: First recommendations made This Committee held its first meeting on 26 February 2015 in Hinxton, UK. Mark Forster of Syngenta was elected Chair of the Committee and Wendy Filsell of Unilever was elected Vice Chair. The committee published its first recommendations, introduced examples of value generated by open life-science data resources, and outlined how ELIXIR can help industry make better use of these resources.

ELIXIR and GOBLET launch global training strategy ELIXIR and the Global Organisation for Bioinformatics Learning, Education and Training (GOBLET) published a Joint Training Strategy to establish a collaboration framework. ELIXIR and GOBLET organised workshops on e-Learning in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Cape Town, South Africa.

Beacon project: ELIXIR partners with the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health During the third plenary meeting of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), ELIXIR and GA4GH discussed a joint project to provide data-discovery services for genomics. The project centres on establishing GA4GH Beacons in the European Genome-phenome Archive (EMBL-EBI and CRG Barcelona) and national resources in Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands. The ELIXIR Beacon project started on 1 September.

4 May 2015 ELIXIR Finland Node launches officially ELIXIR Finland was launched at an event in the Natural History Museum of Helsinki. The event featured an address by Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

9 October 2015

22 October 2015

G7 report highlights ELIXIR as a global research infrastructure The G7 Group of Senior Officials (GSO) on Global Research Infrastructures published its 2015 Progress Report following a meeting of the G7 Science Ministers held on 8-9 October 2015. The report named ELIXIR as a Global Research Infrastructure with the potential for collaboration with countries across the globe.

France and Spain join ELIXIR In October and November 2015, the ELIXIR Board approved the membership applications of France, Spain and Belgium. ELIXIR Spain is funded by the National Institute of Health Carlos III and coordinated by the National Bioinformatics Institute (INB), which maintains core resources in functional genomics, transcriptomics with RNA-Seq, genotyping, genomic medicine, structural bioinformatics and molecular dynamics simulations.

ELIXIR France is led by the French Institute of Bioinformatics (IFB), which provides well-curated specialised databases, on-line tools and services, dedicated IT infrastructures, support to life-science projects, and training. IFB Platforms add value to routinely produced data in sequencing, genotyping, proteomics, metabolomics and other areas.

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Collaboration with Software Sustainability Institute launches An initiative between ELIXIR and the Software Sustainability Institute, launched in Amsterdam, aims to develop guidelines for creating a sustainable open-source policy for software development.

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ELIXIR and BD2K explore collaboration ELIXIR and the NIH Big Data to Knowledge initiative (BD2K) organised a joint session at ISMB-ECCB 2015 in Dublin. This marked the beginning of an on-going dialogue between Europe and the US to explore shared challenges in lifescience data infrastructure. ELIXIR and BD2K collaborate on interoperability and standards in projects such as BioCADDIE, BioSharing and CEDAR.

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14 December 2015

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13 July 2015

24 November 2015 Belgium joins ELIXIR ELIXIR Belgium focuses on sustainable agriculture and human health, offering databases, resources, services and expertise in biostatistics and machine learning. It also offers expertise and resources in highperformance computing, notably computing resources for handling next generation sequencing data.

17-18 November 2015 Symposium marks the closing of BioMedBridges At the end of BioMedBridges, the "Open Bridges for Life Science Data" symposium in Hinxton presented the project outcomes. Members of the biomedical research infrastructure community discussed practical challenges in data sharing and interoperability. Symbolically, the event was followed by the kick-off meeting for CORBEL, which will build on the achievements of BioMedBridges.

1 September 2015 EXCELERATE and CORBEL grants start Horizon 2020 grants ELIXIR-EXCELERATE and CORBEL commenced, establishing organisational and governance structures and developeing a timeline for delivery. The EXCELERATE kick-off meeting took place on 10 December 2015 in Cambridge, UK. ELIXIR and BBMRI are project coordinators for CORBEL, a collaboration of 11 biomedical research infrastructures. The CORBEL project held its kick-off meeting on 19 November. ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Scientific Advisory Board ELIXIR’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) plays a major role in reviewing ELIXIR Nodes, and provides strategic scientific advice to the ELIXIR Board. The SAB is an independent body made up of leading experts from around the world, and meets twice a year. On its meeting in October 2015 in Hinxton, the ELIXIR Board appointed three new members to the Scientific Advisory Board: Prof. Pascal Borry, Prof. Kate Bushby, and Dr Susan Wallace. Kate Bushby replaces Dr Ségolène Aymé who stepped down from the ELIXIR SAB at the end of her term in October 2015; Pascal Borry and Susan Wallace will work in the SAB as experts on Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI).

Members:

• Prof. Alan Archibald, University of Edinburgh, UK • D r Ségolène Aymé, Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale, France (until October 2015) • P rof. Pascal Borry, University of Leuven, Belgium (from October 2015) • P rof. Kate Bushby, Newcastle University, UK (from October 2015) • Prof. Elina Ikonen, University of Helsinki, Finland • P rof. Edward Marcotte, The University of Texas at Austin, USA • P rof. Nicola Mulder, UCT Computational Biology Group (NBN), South Africa • D r Susan E. Wallace, University of Leicester, UK (from October 2015) • Dr Jérôme Wojcik, Quartz Bio, Switzerland

• Chair: Dr Robert Gentleman, 23andMe, USA • V ice Chair: Dr Janet Kelso, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany

ELIXIR Scientific Advisory Board in 2015. From Left to right: Edward Marcotte, Susan E. Wallace, Elina Ikonen, Jérôme Wojcik, Robert Gentleman, Alan Archibald, Ségolène Aymé, Janet Kelso, Nicola Mulder.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

International collaboration ELIXIR expanded its membership within Europe during 2015, and began to develop collaborations with key countries and initiatives globally.

Dialogue with Australia and Canada picked up throughout 2015, with visits by the ELIXIR Director to both countries. Discussions took place around the development of Memoranda of Understanding, with the aim of facilitating a path to closer collaboration or membership in the coming years.

Expanding membership within Europe

On the technical level, ELIXIR Platforms and groups expanded their interaction with key global initiatives such as the GA4GH, GOBLET and the Research Data Alliance (RDA).

Membership of ELIXIR at the start of 2015 stood at 12 (the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and EMBL-EBI) with six Observer countries (France, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia and Greece). Throughout the year, France, Spain and Belgium moved to become ELIXIR Members, and thus be able to fully participate in its activities, taking membership to 15, with Italy poised to join as Member in early 2016. The progress made in this regard has been extremely positive and is testament to the importance ESFRI member states place on ELIXIR and to its successful operations so far.

At the policy level, ELIXIR began global discussions around the sustainability of databases with representatives of North American, European and Asian funding bodies. In 2016 ELIXIR will publish a public international strategy, mapping out the international countries and initiatives that will be the focus of global collaboration efforts.

Ireland became an ELIXIR Observer in Autumn 2015 and the remaining Observer countries (Slovenia and Greece) made good progress towards ratifying the ECA and achieving full Membership in ELIXIR in 2016. Dialogue continued with Ministries and scientific communities in Germany, Luxembourg and Austria, with the aim of facilitating Membership in the future. In particular, ELIXIR collaborated on a joint strategy with the German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure (de.NBI), with a view to implementing this collaboration fully when a positive decision on Germanyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s membership in ELIXIR has been taken.

Positioning ELIXIR globally In October, the G7 Group of Senior Officials (GSO) on Global Research Infrastructures published its 2015 Progress Report. ELIXIR was recognised by the report as a research infrastructure of global potential, due to the potential it has for collaboration with, and membership from, countries across the globe. ELIXIR was one of only a small number of ESFRI Research Infrastructures to be categorised as such. Collaboration with the US Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) initiative stepped up, with a joint workshop on standards and interoperability in London early in the year, a joint session at the European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) in Dublin in summer, and representation from ELIXIR members at the BD2K annual meeting later in the year.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Capacity building ELIXIRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Capacity building and Node development programme began in 2015. The programme focuses on knowledge transfer amongst ELIXIR Nodes, particularly for newer or smaller Nodes and those in less research-intensive regions. Rolled out as part of ELIXIR-EXCELERATE Work Package 10, the programme aims to boost organisational capacity in newly formed ELIXIR Nodes and create an ELIXIR-wide Genome Annotation Network. Led by ELIXIR Czech Republic and ELIXIR Sweden, the programme saw the organisation of three successful knowledge exchange workshops in 2015.

Accessing EU Structural Funds 8-9 October, Brno, Czech Republic The workshop brought together experts on EU Structural Funds (ESIF) from across ELIXIR Nodes and organisations such as the European Commission. Hosted by CEITEC, the programme allowed partners understand the current rules and opportunities for ESIF, exchange best practice in using ESIF to fund research infrastructures and plan for an ELIXIR Task Force on ESIF.

Genome Annotation 19-20 October, Uppsala, Sweden Hosted by ELIXIR Sweden, the meeting brought together 26 participants, representing 11 ELIXIR Nodes. The programme was dedicated to presenting and discussing the interests

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

and needs in genome assembly and annotation across the Nodes and defining the work plan for 2016. In the first part, participants presented their Nodes and their capacity and interest in genome assembly and annotation. The second part focused on specific tasks to support information exchange and training within the group.

Structure and Governance of ELIXIR Nodes 3-4 November, Brussels, Belgium Over 20 ELIXIR representatives attended this event, held in Brussels at Prague House. With talks from established Nodes, such as the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, it focused on organisational and governance structures for ELIXIR Nodes. Another topic for discussion was building effective national collaboration between ELIXIR and other ESFRI infrastructures. The meeting also included a session from the European Commission on using the Linked Third Party clause in Horizon 2020 grants. Looking ahead to 2016, the Capacity Building programme will work on developing the concept of ELIXIR Data Nodes Network, which aims to document ELIXIR-wide good data stewardship, such as practices for submission to archives and practices for optimal interoperability of these archives, as well as good practices in setting up Data Nodes enabling secure storage of sensitive human data. Furthermore, the programme will look at staff exchanges between ELIXIR Nodes and facilitate Node development through exchanging expertise on national roadmap applications. Participants at the ELIXIR capacity building and Node development workshop , Brussels, 3-4 November 2015.

Scientific collaborations: EU grants ELIXIR participates in several EC-funded projects to drive the delivery of various bioinformatics services to the scientific community. These projects enable ELIXIR to collaborate with other key European and global initiatives, as well as other ESFRI Research Infrastructures and e-Infrastructures.

ELIXIR, represented by ELIXIR Finland (CSC- IT Center for Science), focuses on preparing training materials for service providers and leads the work on Level of Assurance. In 2015, ELIXIR Finland conducted a Level of Assurance survey among operators of research and e-infrastructures and developed a recommendation for a minimal assurance level for European research infrastructures, which define the minimum authentication requirements to allow user access. AARC benefited from ELIXIR’s requirements and design documentation of its authentication and authorisation infrastructure (AAI), which was used in the project’s architecture blueprints.

ENVRIplus ENVRIplus (www.envriplus.eu) is a Horizon 2020 project linking Environmental and Earth System Research Infrastructures, projects and networks together with technical specialist partners to create a more coherent,

European Marine Biological Research Infrastructure Cluster (EMBRIC) EMBRIC (www.embric.eu), financed with €9 million from the Horizon 2020 programme, connects marine biotechnology initiatives that focus on science, industry and regional growth. The EMBRIC project started in September 2015 and includes four ESFRI Research Infrastructures: European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC), Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure (MIRRI), EUOPENSCREEN and ELIXIR. With five ELIXIR Nodes involved (France, Greece, Italy, Norway and EMBL-EBI), ELIXIR’s role is to provide capacities and expertise in data services and management. The goals of EMBRIC are to: 1. Strengthen the connection of science with industry; 2. Defragment R&D policies and involve maritime regions with the construction of EMBRIC; 3. Accelerate the scientific discovery and innovation from marine bioresources.

Authentication and Authorisation for Research and Collaboration

interdisciplinary and interoperable cluster of Environmental Research Infrastructures. ENVRIplus covers all domains of Earth system science (Atmospheric domain, Marine domain, Biosphere and Solid Earth domains), and it is organised into six themes: (1) Technical innovation, (2) Data for science, (3) Access to research infrastructures, (4) Societal relevance and understanding, (5) Knowledge transfer and (6) Communication and dissemination. ELIXIR, represented by EMBL-EBI, provides expertise and resources in the Biodiversity and Ecosystem field and in the ‘Data for science’ theme. The project started in May 2015 and is coordinated by the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) Research Infrastructure.

The AARC project (https://aarc-project.eu) started in May 2015, bringing together 20 partners from across Europe. The project’s goal is to harmonise AAI approaches among different e-infrastructures and research collaborations.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Collaborations with biomedical research infrastructures ELIXIR coordinates collaboration between many research infrastructures in the biomedical sciences. 2015 saw the successful conclusion of BioMedBridges, the first biomedical science research infrastructure ‘cluster project’, and the start of its successor, CORBEL, which is coordinated by ELIXIR. Both BioMedBridges and CORBEL focus on simplifying and harmonising user access to the services offered by the ESFRI biomedical research infrastructures. Whilst for BioMedBridges, the goal was to enable data integration across the biological, medical, translational and clinical domains, CORBEL aims to support users and research projects in accessing common services run by partners, going beyond data to also include access to physical infrastructures, innovation and ELSI expertise.

BioMedBridges Coordinated by EMBL-EBI on behalf of ELIXIR, BioMedBridges (2012-2015, www.biomedbridges.eu) brought together 12 of Europe’s biomedical sciences research infrastructures to link the data, resources and services provided by the individual infrastructures. BioMedBridges’ main purpose was to facilitate the translation of ideas into new biomedical and environmental applications by removing technical stumbling blocks related to interoperability of data coming from different scientific domains. BioMedBridges built a shared data culture by connecting data specialists and domain experts across a large number of biomedical, biological and environmental domains, from genomics, imaging and structural biology, through mouse disease models and clinical trials to highly contagious agents and chemical biology. The project outcomes and its contribution to data interoperability laid the foundation for the reuse, combination and analysis of data in many different contexts across different spatial scales (from molecules to humans and environment), between different species (from mouse models to humans), between different technologies, and across different research communities (from basic molecular biologists to clinicians and environmental researchers). Examples of project results include the harmonisation of standards and identifiers, guidelines for sharing sensitive and personally identifiable data, a range of new services to facilitate discovery in research on diabetes and obesity by enabling better comparisons between data on mouse models and humans, a web service to support the analysis of low-resolution structural data, tools to enable easier and better data annotation and annotation of images from different organisms and at different scales and many others. “What BioMedBridges tries to do is to ensure that the interface between these different communities within the life sciences gets better so that we can exchange our data,"

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

said Janet Thornton of EMBL-EBI. "It’s very clear that over the next ten, twenty years the real novel discoveries in life sciences will occur at the interfaces between the molecular and the cellular, the cellular and the organismal, and that we need to join all of this data up. Gradually (...) we will develop much better tools, ontologies and identifiers that will allow us to seamlessly exchange and interpret data.”

"It’s very clear that over the next ten, twenty years the real novel discoveries in life sciences will occur at the interfaces between the molecular and the cellular, the cellular and the organismal, and that we need to join all of this data up." Janet Thornton, EMBL-EBI/ELIXIR, BioMedBridges Coordinator

Open Bridges for Life-Science Data symposium The BioMedBridges project concluded with the final symposium, hosted by ELIXIR at the Wellcome Genome Campus Conference Centre in Hinxton, on 17-18 November 2015. The symposium presented the results and achievements of the project and provided a venue for the community to discuss real-life challenges connected to data sharing and interoperability in the life sciences. It attracted around 250 delegates from all over the world.

CORBEL CORBEL (www.corbel-project.eu), the next biomedical science cluster project, builds on and extends a number of the resources, tools and collaborations developed in BioMedBridges. The CORBEL consortium is led by ELIXIR as the coordinator and BBMRI as co-coordinator.

Overall goals: 1. Set up simplified access points and joined-up service catalogues for users across medicine and biology; 2. Integrate the capabilities of individual RIs into the scientific workflow of advanced users; 3. Implement a portfolio of seamless, shared research infrastructure services.

Basic facts: • Funded with €14.5 million over four years (2015-2019); • 1 1 participating research infrastructures in biomedical sciences (35 partners in nine European countries); • Start: 1 September 2015; • C oordination: ELIXIR (Coordinator) and BBMRI‐ERIC (Co-coordinator).

Each of the participating research infrastructures provides access to domain-specific research services, instruments, data, samples, facilities and specialist knowledge and training that collectively cover life science research, from basic biology to medical translation. CORBEL will integrate these services into common scientific workflows and ensure that these respond to the needs of European researchers. CORBEL will also set up a training programme for research infrastructure operators and key users to drive the rapid implementation of shared services into research infrastructure operations. The project started in September 2015 and its priorities have been discussed on 19 November 2016 at the kickoff meeting held on the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, following the BioMedBridges symposium. For 2016, priorities include linking CORBEL’s data management efforts with other standardisation efforts globally, including parallel efforts in the EXCELERATE interoperability Work Package, and the development of common approaches to Ethical, Legal and Societal Implications (ELSI).

Photos from the Open Bridges for Life-Science Data symposium, Hinxton, UK, November 2015. ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Activities at the ELIXIR Hub Supporting Node development

ELIXIR Gateway on F1000Research

For a fully functional infrastructure, it is critical to implement ELIXIR effectively at the national level and tie the institutes and resources together in each country so that the national Node can enter into a Collaboration Agreement with the ELIXIR Hub. After the approval of the ELIXIR Collaboration Agreement Template in 2014, the first agreements between the Hub and ELIXIR Nodes (Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland) were put into force in 2015.

In December 2015, ELIXIR launched the ELIXIR F1000Research Gateway (http://f1000research.com/ channels/elixir) to publish its research and technical outputs. The Gateway was introduced to the community in an Editorial, published by the newly established ELIXIR Editorial Board.

In 2016, we plan to conclude the negotiations with the remaining ELIXIR Nodes and have the ELIXIR Board to approve these agreements later in the year. Each Collaboration Agreement will also describe the scientific and service content that each national ELIXIR Node exposes through ELIXIR: the work to draft these Service Delivery Plans was initiated in 2015 and will continue throughout 2016.

ELIXIR communications The ELIXIR Hub launched a new HTML template and a new Drupal installation with an ELIXIR theme that can be adopted by ELIXIR Nodes in building their own website. The ELIXIR Drupal installation is an out-of-the-box solution for ELIXIR Nodes and allows for seamless navigation between all ELIXIR websites. ELIXIR Portugal’s new website launched in November 2015 (www.elixir-portugal.org) and was the first site to use the ELIXIR Drupal installation. In 2015, ELIXIR UK, ELIXIR Norway and ELIXIR Slovenia started the development of their websites using the Drupal theme. In 2016 we plan to update the structure and content of the public website and improve the site’s navigation. We will also support further Nodes in their adoption of the ELIXIR Drupal installation. The ELIXIR intranet launched in December 2015 to provide a platform for information and knowledge exchange to the ELIXIR community. It is embedded into the ELIXIR website and provides a reference point for all information and documents within the ELIXIR infrastructure. The intranet was also the testing ground for the ELIXIR Authorisation and Authentication Infrastructure (AAI)–the first service to use the ELIXIR AAI for login and access. In 2015, the intranet was in testing mode and has been introduced only to a limited number of community members. In 2016 the intranet will be rolled out to all Platforms and Use Cases and will become the main internal communication channel in ELIXIR.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

ELIXIR Gateway’s Advisory Board oversees the publication process and provides the editorial oversight to ensure that the published materials are relevant to the ELIXIR community. All research articles published in the ELIXIR Reports Channel are transparently peerreviewed through the F1000Research-invited post-publication open peerreview process. Articles accepted by independent reviewers are indexed in PubMed and available as open access in Europe PMC and other major bibliographic databases. The Gateway will feature work developed through ELIXIR’s five Technical Platforms: Tools, Data, Compute, Interoperability and Training, as well as ELIXIR’s strategy documents, technology developments and reviews. The Gateway published its first research articles in early 2016.

ELIXIR Hub staff In 2015, the ELIXIR Hub expanded its team and recruited experts for technical, communications and project management positions. Stephanie Suhr joined the Hub as Senior Project Manager to lead the project management unit for externally-funded projects. In September, Friederike Schmidt-Tremmel joined as Project Manager for the CORBEL project. The technical expertise at the Hub was strengthened by the arrival of three visitors: Ilkka Lappalainen from EMBLEBI, Mikael Linden from CSC - IT Center for Science (ELIXIR Finland) and Andy Jenkinson from EMBL-EBI. Ilkka brought to the ELIXIR Hub his considerable expertise on secure sharing of genomic data, and helped shape our strategy for managing human data. In September 2015, Ilkka took up a new position in ELIXIR Finland as Biomedical Service Development Manager. We wish Ilkka all the best for his new job. Mikael Linden has a strong expertise in authentication and authorisation infrastructure (AAI) and will support the work of the ELIXIR Compute Platform. In the ELIXIR-EXCELERATE project, Mikael co-leads our work to define and implement ELIXIR authorisation and authentication services to enable easy and secure user access to data resources and other ELIXIR resources.

ELIXIR Hub staff in 2015. From Left to right: Joy Friesner, Mikael Linden, Nicola Kay, Chuqiao Gong, Phyllida Hallidie, Susanna Repo, Niklas Blomberg, Friederike Schmidt-Tremmel, Andy Smith, Steffi Suhr, Martin Cook, Přemysl Velek. Front row: Andy Jenkinson and Rafael Jimenez. (Not pictured: Ilkka Lappalainen.)

Andy Jenkinson has extensive experience in life science data management and at the Hub he focused on developing ELIXIR’s data management architecture and activities. He looked across the ELIXIR Platforms and Use Cases and delivered a proposal for an architecture that supports effective data distribution to users across ELIXIR Nodes and cloud environments. In June, Přemysl Velek joined the ELIXIR Hub as Communication and Outreach Officer and led ELIXIR’s dayto-day communications and outreach activities supporting the dissemination of ELIXIR-related activities. He also initiated a network of communications experts from across ELIXIR Nodes. To ensure the ELIXIR website, intranet and other online services are developed to cater the growing infrastructure, Martin Cook joined the ELIXIR Hub as Web Developer. Charles Gaillard joined the Hub as an intern, working on a short-term project for the ELIXIR Events portal. Phyllida Hallidie joined us in July to take the role as Personal Assistant to the ELIXIR Director when Branka Stekovic moved to a new role outside of ELIXIR.

Staff exchange In October 2015, two staff members from ELIXIR Czech Republic (CEITEC) visited the ELIXIR Hub in Hinxton, UK, and spent a week learning about ELIXIR Communications activities and exchanging experience in different aspects of science communications and outreach. Jana Silařová, CEITEC Communications Officer and Dana Černošková, CEITEC Events Officer met with Hub staff members–Andrew Smith and Přemysl Velek – as well as with EMBL-EBI’s Communications team and discussed how to facilitate information exchange between ELIXIR Nodes. Plans for the establishment of an official ELIXIR staff exchange programme are underway. The programme, expected to roll out in 2016, would enable sharing of experience and expertise between the ELIXIR Nodes and the Hub.

In the legal office at EMBL Heidelberg, Anna Kubalczyk joined the team as Legal Officer to support Collaboration Agreements and the Commissioned Services contracts.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

ELIXIR committees ELIXIR Board Chair: Prof. Torsten Schwede (Switzerland) Vice Chairs: Prof. Rein Aasland (Norway), Dr Anna Wetterbom (Sweden)

Country

Scientific delegate(s)

Administrative delegate

Belgium (from Oct. 2015)

Dr François Guissart

Mrs Michele Oleo and Mr Didier Flagothier

Czech Republic

Prof. Jaroslav Koča

Mr Jan Buriánek

Denmark

Prof. Anders Krogh

Mr Troels Tvedegaard Rasmussen

Estonia

Prof. Pärt Peterson

Mr Toivo Räim and Mr Priit Tamm

Finland

Dr Per Öster

Ms Riina Vuorento and Dr Jarmo Wahlfors

France (from Oct. 2015)

Dr Eric Guittet and Dr Claudine Medigue

Mr François Chambelin

Israel

Dr Yossi Kalifa

Ms Ilana Lowi

Netherlands

Prof. Jaap Heringa and Dr Ruben Kok

Dr Bea Pauw

Norway

Prof. Rein Aasland and Prof. Stig Omholt

Dr Jacob E. Wang

Portugal

Dr Ana Teresa Freitas

Dr Andreia Feijão and Dr Tiago Saborida

Spain (from Oct. 2015)

Prof. Arcadi Navarro

Dr Cristina Bauluz and Dr Rafael de Andres-Medina

Sweden

Prof. Ulf Gyllensten

Dr Anna Wetterbom

Switzerland

Prof. Torsten Schwede

Dr Isabella Beretta

Dr Chris Rawlings

Dr Mark Palmer and Dr Amanda Collis

EMBL

Prof. Iain Mattaj and Prof. Janet Thornton Dr Silke Schumacher

Observers Greece

TBC

Dr Konstantina Botsi

Ireland

TBC

Dr Eamonn Cahill

Italy (member as of Jan. 2016) Prof. Anna Tramontano

Dr Salvatore La Rosa

Slovenia (member as of Feb. 2016)

Dr Albin Kralj

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Prof. Damjana Rozman

Heads of Node Committee Chair: Dr Niklas Blomberg (ELIXIR Hub)

Country

Head(s) of Node

Belgium (from Nov. 2015)

Prof. Yves Van de Peer

Czech Republic

Dr Jiří Vondrášek

Denmark

Prof. Søren Brunak

Estonia

Prof. Jaak Vilo

Finland

Dr Tommi Nyrönen

France (from Oct. 2015)

Dr Jean‐François Gibrat

Israel

Prof. Michal Linial

Netherlands

Prof. Barend Mons

Norway

Prof. Inge Jonassen

Portugal

Prof. Arlindo Oliveira

Spain (from Oct. 2015)

Prof. Alfonso Valencia

Sweden

Prof. Bengt Persson

Switzerland

Prof. Ron Appel

Prof. Chris Ponting

EMBL

Dr Rolf Apweiler and Dr Ewan Birney

Observers Greece

Prof. Babis Savakis

Ireland

TBC

Italy (member as of Jan 2016)

Prof. Graziano Pesole

Slovenia (member as of Feb 2016)

Prof. Brane Leskošek

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

ELIXIR Technical Coordinators Group Chair: Rafael C. Jimenez (ELIXIR Hub)

Country

Technical coordinator(s)

Belgium (from Nov. 2015)

Dr Frederik Coppens (Deputy: Dr Lieven Sterck)

Czech Republic

Dr David Antoš (Deputy: Dr Jan Paces)

Denmark

Mr Kristoffer Rapacki

Estonia

Dr Hedi Peterson

Finland

Dr Jarno Laitinen

France (from Oct. 2015)

Dr Christophe Blanchet

Israel

Dr Jaime Prilusky

Netherlands

Dr Rob Hooft

Norway

Dr Kjell Petersen

Portugal

Dr Mário Silva

Spain (from Oct. 2015)

Dr Victor de la Torre

Sweden

Dr Mikael Borg

Switzerland

Dr Heinz Stockinger

Dr Manuel Corpas

EMBL

Dr Steven Newhouse

Observers Greece

Dr Theodore Dalamagas (Deputy: Dr Stelios Sartzetakis)

Ireland

TBC

Italy (member as of Jan. 2016)

Dr Federico Zambelli

Slovenia (member as of Feb. 2016)

Dr Peter Juvan (Deputy: Prof. Brane Leskošek)

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

ELIXIR Training Coordinators Group Chair: Dr Rita Hendricusdottir (ELIXIR UK)

Country

Training coordinator(s)

Belgium (from Nov. 2015)

Dr Alexander Botzki

Czech Republic

Dr Vojtěch Spiwok

Denmark

Dr Henriette Husum Bak-Jensen

Estonia

Dr Hedi Peterson

Finland

Dr Eija Korpelainen

France (from Oct. 2015)

Dr Victoria Dominguez del Angel

Israel

Prof. Michal Linial

Netherlands

Dr Celia van Gelder

Norway

Dr Ståle Nygård

Portugal

Mr Pedro Fernandes

Spain (from Oct. 2015)

Dr Oswaldo Trelles

Sweden

Dr Sara Light

Switzerland

Dr Patricia Palagi

EMBL

Dr Sarah Morgan

ELIXIR Hub

Mr Rafael C. Jimenez

Observers Greece

Dr Theodore Dalamagas (Deputy: Dr Stelios Sartzetakis)

Ireland

TBC

Italy (member as of Jan. 2016)

Dr Federico Zambelli

Slovenia (member as of Feb. 2016)

Dr Peter Juvan (Deputy: Prof. Brane Leskošek)

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

Financial data INCOME 2015*

2014*

Member state contributions Ordinary contributions

(b)

2,064

1,198

External grants

(a)

150

(1)

2,217

1,197

2015*

2014*

Salaries

112

Running costs

191

Salaries

800

557

Running costs

463

265

Directorate and Administration Costs

1,263

822

Support and Admin Infrastructure Costs

405

142

Grant expenditure incurred

150

Total expenditure

2,009

1,001

Surplus / (Deficit)

208

196

Other income Provision for unpaid member state contributions

(b)

Net income

EXPENDITURE Technological Activities

Equipment and depreciation

Total expenditure Technological Activities Directorate and Administrative expenditure

Equipment

(a) GRANT INCOME 2015*

2014*

5,941

Grant funding received

150

Expenditure incurred

(150)

Grant funding awarded

Unutilised grant income *Numbers shown are expressed in thousands of euros.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

(b) ELIXIR member state contributions 2015*

2014*

Belgium

116

Czech Republic

Denmark

Estonia

Finland

France

226

Greece

Israel

The Netherlands

193

131

Norway

107

Portugal

Slovenia

265

Sweden

118

Switzerland

151

102

United Kingdom

594

404

2,064

1,198

Member state

Spain

(i)

Total Less provision for unpaid member state contributions

(ii)

Net member state receivables

(1)

2,064

1,197

(i)The Spanish contribution comprises the 2015 contribution amount of €351 000, less a credit note issued relating to the 2014 contribution of €86 000. (ii) The 2014 accounts included requested write-off of the outstanding balance of Switzerland’s 2013 contribution. This was a result of the contribution being paid in Swiss francs with an ensuing difference in the foreign exchange at the time of payment causing a small currency loss of €931.27. This has been written off in 2015.

(b) The following countries have amounts due or prepaid 31 December 2015* Member state

Contribution 2015 Contribution 2014/2013

Total

Prepayments for 2016

Greece

Netherlands

205

Israel

Total

261

*Numbers shown are expressed in thousands of euros.

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

ELIXIR Hub EMBL-EBI South building Hinxton, Cambridge, UK

ELIXIR Annual Report 2015

ELIXIR is building a sustainable European Infrastructure for biological information, supporting life science research and its translation to: Medicine Environment Bioindustries Society

Contact Niklas Blomberg, Director ELIXIR Wellcome Genome Campus Hinxton, Cambridgeshire CB10 1SD, United Kingdom C P E 1y

+44 (0)1223 492 670 +44 (0)1223 494 468 info@elixir-europe.org www.elixir-europe.org ELIXIR Scientific Programme 2014