Elixir has been awarded €19 million from the European Union to accelerate the implementation of Europe’s life-science data infrastructure over the next four years. From September 2015, Elixir-Excelerate will facilitate the integration of Europe’s bioinformatics resources, supporting all sectors of life-science R&D. The Spanish node includes 10 organizations and research centers, amongst them IRB Barcelona and CNAG, located at the Barcelona Science Park.

Excelerate funding will help Elixir coordinate and extend national and international data resources to ensure the delivery of world-leading life-science data services. It will support a pan-European training programme, anchored in national infrastructures, to increase bioinformatics capacity and competency. It will also provide efficiencies in management and operation throughout the infrastructure, which is distributed amongst 17 countries. 

Elixir Director Niklas Blomberg says, “I am delighted that the EU is supporting this high-impact project. In the age of big data, it is critical that we can all make the most of the bioinformatics capacity that has been developed in each of our member states. This will make a difference to Europe’s 500,000 life-science researchers, who need public research data to be managed well over the long term so it can be reused to maximum effect. Excelerate will bring about a step change in how bioinformatics services are coordinated across Europe, ensuring they are integrated, grow in step with the advent of new technologies, and maintained appropriately over the long term.”

Dedicated use cases, defined in close partnership with diverse research communities, will help Elixir grow in keeping with the needs of scientists working on rare diseases, biomedical and human genomics, marine and plant sciences and other specialized areas. This will ensure that Elixir’s services for data, tools, interoperability, compute, training and industry support are rooted in user needs, and can deliver benefits to existing and future research projects.