ELIXIR-IIB: a growing support to national and international research in life sciences

ELIXIR is a European Research Infrastructure that supports and brings together resources (databases, software tools, training materials, cloud storage and supercomputers) from across Europe to sustain research in life sciences. The goal is to make it easier for scientists from academia, research institutions and industry to find and share data, exchange expertise and agree on best practices. The scientific and technical activities in ELIXIR are run by five Platforms and a number of Communities. The five Platforms (Data, Tools, Compute, Interoperability and Training) comprise experts who define strategies and provide services such as tool development, data management, etc.. Communities comprise experts who work in specific scientific areas (e.g. structural bioinformatics, rare diseases, marine metagenomics). ELIXIR adopts a "Hub and Nodes" organisation model. The Hub (Wellcome Genome Campus, Cambridge, UK) operates as the headquarters that coordinates all the activities. The national Nodes are the >20 participating member states. Each Node is, in turn, a network of organizations. The Italian Node of ELIXIR has been formally established as a Joint Research Unit named ELIXIR - Infrastruttura Italiana di Bioinformatica (ELIXIR-IIB). It is in charge of the coordination and delivery of existing bioinformatics services at a national level. ELIXIR-IIB is led by the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy. It currently involves 23 partners, including universities and research institutions/facilities of national relevance, including, "Sapienza" University of Rome and INFN. The organization of ELIXIR-IIB mirrors ELIXIR at the European level. It includes five operational Platforms (Data, Tools, Compute, Interoperability and Training) and several thematic communities.