Developing, consolidating and optimising ELIXIR as an European research infrastructure

ELIXIR unites Europe’s leading life science organisations in managing and safeguarding the increasing volume of data being generated by publicly funded research. It coordinates, integrates and sustains bioinformatics resources across its 23 nodes.

ELIXIR enables users in academia and industry to access services (databases, software, training, standards, compute) provided through national Nodes. ELIXIR is the ESFRI Landmark for life science data and plays a unique role in the landscape, with millions of users globally, supporting the digital-needs of other ESFRIs and Horizon Europe research projects.

Increasingly, life-science data is held at national and institutional centres. Thus, large-scale data analytics requires that researchers can find and analyse data distributed across Europe.

The purpose of ELIXIR-STEERS is to build capacity for large-scale, cross-border data analysis and for this capacity to be embedded across member states. ELIXIR-STEERS directly benefit Europe’s life scientists by allowing software and workflows to meet requirements of those using them in national centres. A ‘robust, reproducible and green’ approach to software and workflow provision will ensure that scientists have access to high quality, energy-efficient analysis tools.

The project will also develop the crediting and recognition systems for software, supporting improvements to research assessment frameworks. Further, ELIXIR-STEERS supports ELIXIR’s long-term operations by addressing the recommendations of the European Commission and ESFRI on the long-term sustainability of research infrastructures.

It will strengthen the operational excellence of ELIXIR’s Nodes; support the training and development of professional and scientific staff in ELIXIR Nodes; expand the membership of ELIXIR to new countries, especially widening countries; enable international collaborations in particular with Latin America and Africa; and stimulate innovation and industry engagement. Training-wise we will connect with our ELIXIR training portals TeSS and RDMkit.

eScienceLab involvement

eScience Lab will contribute work on credit and attribution for workflows in WorkflowHub, reuse of WorkflowHub workflows, Workflow RO-Crate, FAIR Computational Workflows and Bioschemas.

UNIMAN contributions:

  • WP3: Infrastructure services to enable adoption and deployment of software best practices
    • O3.1: Make software, tools, and workflows first class citizens for assessment of researchers
    • O3.2: Stimulate the usage of Software Management Plans to support sustainable research software
    • O3.3: Benchmark resource usage for computational tasks in life sciences
    • O3.4: Implement resource optimisation features in workflow management systems
    • T3.1: Enable crediting scientists for research assets
    • T3.3: Identify fit-for-purpose reproducible workflows through technical and scientific benchmarking
  • WP4: Strengthening and equipping ELIXIR Nodes and Node staff with key skills and resources in organisation, management and training
    • O4.1: Embedding good practices in ELIXIR Node operations, equipping Nodes, established and new, with guidelines on how to be(come) sustainable and effective.
    • T4.2: Organisational and research management capacity for Nodes
    • T4.3: Capacity building in training skills for ELIXIR Node staff