Joint research infrastructure projects
Euro-BioImaging is embedded in the landscape of European research infrastructures (RIs) and maintains strong links with other RIs in the life sciences and beyond. Euro-BioImaging participates in common activities that facilitate joint user access to participating RIs, for a wide variety of projects, including those concerning health, plant and marine biology. In parallel, Euro-BioImaging collaboratively works on building digital spaces for the life sciences and fostering FAIR image data management. If you would like to receive more specific information on Euro-BioImaging’s contribution to projects and partnerships, please don’t hesitate to get in touch (info@eurobioimaging.eu).
To learn more about Euro-BioImaging’s participation in the the Horizon EU project ISIDORe, please visit our ISIDORe webpage: https://www.eurobioimaging.eu/content/isidore
Click on project logos to learn more
Euro-BioImaging's EU Project Timeline
In early 2022, Euro-BioImaging was awarded a number of important Horizon Europe grants. The overwhelming success in the proposal process shows the strength of our infrastructure and the importance of imaging services in driving excellent science and solving a variety of global societal challenges.
ISIDORe
Euro-BioImaging is proud to participate in the Horizon Europe funded ISIDORe project, led by ERINHA, that brings together 154 project partners from 32 countries around the world. This project was kicked off in February 2022 and is designed to effectively support research on infectious diseases and increase pandemic preparedness.
ISIDORe provides an excellent opportunity for free of charge access to cutting-edge technology platforms and resources across a wide spectrum ranging from characterization of pathogens to vaccine development.
Within this project, Euro-BioImaging, along with Instruct ERIC, is co-leading Work Package 9, to advise and guide researchers with imaging and structural biology projects, and provide open access to analytical services across multiple research infrastructures together with the partners VetBioNet, EMERGEN and INFRAVEC. In addition, Euro-BioImaging will contribute with other project partners to scientific coordination, FAIR data handling, quality management, training, communication and outreach in ISIDORe, as well as access to service provision for specific objectives (e.g. phenotyping of animal models).
The First ISIDORe Call for user projects opened in June 2022, to support researchers working on SARS-CoV-2, Covid-19 and its variants of concern. For more information on ISIDORe TransNational Access Calls and application guidelines to Euro-BioImaging services, please visit our webpage: https://www.eurobioimaging.eu/content/isidore
Reference article on the ISIDORe project:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00669-4
BY-COVID
BY-COVID will tackle the data challenges that can hinder effective pandemic response. The core aim of the project is to ensure that data on SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious diseases can be found and used by everyone as soon as they are available. BY-COVID will build and expand upon the successful COVID-19 Data Platform, a resource initiated in the early stages of the pandemic and led by EMBL-EBI.
Within this project, Euro-BioImaging will co-lead WP2, “Accessing heterogeneous data across domains and jurisdictions for enabling the downstream processing of COVID-19 and future pandemic episodes data.” Our role will be to ensure valuable imaging datasets are available for reuse in public repositories like BioImage Archive & COVID19 Data Portal to bolster research & support pandemic readiness.
EOSC Future
EOSC Future is an EU-funded H2020 project that builds on the existing baseline for the European Open Science Cloud to deliver a platform with a durable set of user-friendly components that are designed for the long haul. This project adopts a system-of-systems approach to the platform, linking together other research portals, resources and services to respond to the data needs of a wide range of researchers.
Within EOSC Future, Euro-BioImaging will work together with EU-Openscreen ERIC, a research infrastructure for chemical screening and Instruct ERIC, a research infrastructure for structural biology, to implement an EOSC Future Test Science Project on “Open Imaging Data Sharing in EOSC: COVID-19 as Demonstrator”. The proposed work includes facilitating rapid sharing of Covid-19 related High-throughput microscopy data through a modular, shareable, open, and FAIR workflow. The demonstrator project foresees developments with Galaxy for submitting data to the BioImage Archive and will involve working together with the OME team on data formats. The work accomplished in EOSC Future will greatly facilitate integration and sharing of large-scale FAIR image data sets via EOSC across disciplines within the life sciences and beyond, thereby enabling and stimulating collaborative image-based science.
HEALTHY CLOUD EU
The HealthyCloud project, funded by the European Commission, brings together 21 organizations from 11 countries with broad and complementary expertise, to contribute to a Strategic Agenda towards the European Health Research and Innovation Cloud. This project aims to maximize the impact of health research, by adopting best practices in health data management.
Euro-BioImaging participates in the Healthy Cloud project with two Nodes, the Population Imaging Node hosted by Erasmus MC, and the Multi Modal Molecular imaging Italian node (MMMI) (with the Institute of Biostructure and Bioimaging (IBB) of the CNR and the IRCCS SDN facilities). These nodes have a strong expertise in IT infrastructures, supporting data storage and access in multi-center population imaging and clinical studies, in developing image processing tools and imaging-based biomarkers for preclinical and clinical imaging datasets and in evaluating AI-based image analysis methods. For more information: https://www.eurobioimaging.eu/news/euro-bioimaging-proud-to-be-part-of-the-healthycloud-project/
IMPRESS
IMPRESS brings together 19 partners from 11 European countries, comprising scientists, companies, experts in the field of electron microscopy and research infrastructures, who will collaborate to address needs that are not yet satisfied by commercially-available electron microscopes.
At the core of the IMPRESS project is the development of an interoperable platform based on a modular and standardized cartridge concept, which allows for flexibility and adaptability to different microscopes and instrumentation. This platform will facilitate a wide range of multimodal experiments, correlative workflows and methodological options, which are currently not available on commercially available electron microscopes.
Euro-BioImaging has a considerable number of Nodes that offer Electron Microscopy services, with an extensive EM service expertise that includes techniques such as cryo-ET, freeze-fracturing, Tokuyasu-EM, volumeEM (FIB-SEM, SBF, Array tomography), CLEM, and CXEM. They constitute a large community of early adopters of technology developments that IMPRESS project will drive forward. Euro-BioImaging is involved in the project by:
- (i) disseminating project developments to the biological imaging community,
- (ii) driving training on project developments for technical staff at Euro-BioImaging Nodes in the EM field, and
- (iii) providing support for the bioimaging use case via the University of Maastricht - AMMI Node of Euro-BioImaging, to ensure that technology developments are beneficial and adopted by the bioimaging community.
Read the article on our website for more information.
EUCAIM
Artificial Intelligence is a powerful tool that can support cancer detection, diagnosis and treatment. The development of innovative digital solutions relies on data, including cancer imaging data. The objective of the European Cancer Imaging Initiative is to deploy a federated infrastructure of cancer images covering different cancer types, making them available to clinicians, researchers and innovators. It will allow for the development, benchmarking, testing and piloting of Artificial Intelligence-based technologies for cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Within the European Cancer Imaging Initiative, the EUCAIM project supports this objective. Euro-BioImaging is proud to participate in the project alongside several Med Nodes, DIMP Neuromed and Portuguese Brain Imaging Network Node (University of Coimbra), as well as the Population Imaging Flagship Node Rotterdam (ERASMUS MC) and IRCSS SDN, part of the MMMI Italian Node.
Euro-BioImaging and its Nodes will contribute to a number of Work Packages to help build the backbone for the next generation of cancer diagnostics and treatments. Our work will focus on building the Data Federation & Interoperability Framework (WP5) as well as contributing Use cases for platform expansion and validation (WP7). We are working together with MATICAL (co-lead WP8) on Business & Sustainability models to establish legal, financial and operational structure to sustain the Central Hub in the long-term.
The project also links to the data expertise and engagement of Euro-BioImaging and its Nodes and also links closely to several projects we are participating in, including EOSC4Cancer, CanSERV, and AI4Life.
Read the press release from project leader EIBIR.
EOSC-Life
Euro-BioImaging is also a strong partner in the EOSC-Life project, leading 2 key work packages. EOSC-Life, which started in March 2019, connects the 13 ESFRI research infrastructures in the Health and Food domain to create an open collaborative digital space for life science in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Together they cover all aspects of life science research and all life science domains.
In EOSC-Life the research infrastructures are publishing data from facilities and data resources in the EOSC and linking these FAIR databases to open and reusable Tools and Workflows accessible to users via Europe’s national and international life-science clouds. EOSC-Life is also connecting users across Europe to a single login authentication and resource authorisation system, and developing data policies and training needed to preserve and deepen the trust given by research participants and patients volunteering their data and samples.
To achieve its objectives, EOSC-Life has run Digital Life Sciences Open Calls, which allow successful applicants to adopt advanced data management practice and access data integration and large-scale analysis tools in the cloud. More information on the funded projects and the tools made available to the research community through them can be found here.
Demonstrator projects supported by EOSC-Life have already made resources and tools available to the imaging community. Learn more about these resources:
- EOSC-Life Demonstrator project for preclinical imaging: https://www.eosc-life.eu/d5/
- EOSC-Life Demonstrator project for biological imaging analysis: https://www.eosc-life.eu/d6/
CORBEL
Until 2020, Euro-BioImaging participated in the Horizon 2020-funded cluster project CORBEL (Coordinated Research Infrastructures Building Enduring Life-Science Services). The consortium, comprising of Euro-BioImaging and 12 other life science research infrastructures, aims to facilitate the access to services offered consecutively or in parallel by the participating research infrastructures, thereby supporting scientists in performing advanced interdisciplinary research. In two Open Calls for research projects – co-organized by Euro-BioImaging - almost 40 user projects were selected and granted access, free of charge, to at least two RIs of their choice. Here, Euro-BioImaging by far was the most requested research infrastructure. With the help of these user projects, CORBEL is tackling the challenges in joint service provision across institutes and establishing the long-term sustainability of harmonized access to multiple RIs for the benefit of European life science research. Based on the experiences gained from the user projects, experts within CORBEL are performing essential background work towards the harmonization of user access. A common access portal for the Open Calls and an authorization/authentication infrastructure have also been developed, and the consortium is working on data management issues and is offering common ethical and legal services as well as innovation support to the European life science community. Read and download the brochure here.
ERIC FORUM
The ERIC Forum was formed in 2017, following up on the half-yearly networking events initiated by the European Commission (EC) to address and discuss with the ERICs the implementation of the ERIC regulation.
The ERIC Forum’s aim is to advance operations of ERICs and to strategically contribute to the development of ERIC related policies. Euro-BioImaging participates and contributes to the discussions in the Forum, particularly on the policy areas that affect European Research Infrastructure Consortia, such as the role of RIs in the ERA, funding instruments for RIs.
eRImote
Remote and digital access to research infrastructure services is key to sustainable, equitable and resilient RI service provision, but it involves many challenges and requires new developments. To drive the adoption of remote and digital access to RI services, Euro-BioImaging participates in the eRImote project, which officially launched on June 1st 2022. The project with the full title “Pathways to Improved resilience through Remote/Digital Access for European Research Infrastructures”, is a cross-domain project, coordinated by DESY (German Electron Synchrotron) and bringing together 12 partners from a wide range of different scientific domains covering the social, physical, environmental and life sciences. Euro-BioImaging, along with partner RIs Instruct-ERIC and INFRAFRONTIER, represents the life science Research Infrastructures in this project.
The eRImote project focuses on collecting practical tools and solutions for remote and digital RI service and connecting the wider community of stakeholders via workshops and expert groups. At the same time, the project partners will develop joint recommendations for the transition to remote/digital access through use cases and a green paper. Euro-BioImaging plays a central role in this project, co-leading a work package and driving one of the 5 use cases.
AI4LIFE
AI4LIFE is a Horizon Europe-funded project that brings together the computational and life science communities. Its goal is to empower life science researchers to harness the full potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) methods for bioimage analysis – and in particular microscopy image analysis. With a consortium of ten partners, AI4LIFE promises to create harmonized and interoperable AI tools & methods via Open calls and public challenges and bring these developments to researchers via strategic outreach and advanced training. The solutions developed within the AI4LIFE framework are crucial to solving today’s microscopy image analysis problems and will contribute to boosting the pace of biological and medical insights in the coming years.
Contact:ai4life@eurobioimaging.eu
Read the press release here
AgroSERV
The AgroSERV project, coordinated by AnaEE ERIC and CNRS, brings together 70+ partners to work towards a sustainable and resilient agro-ecological transition. The consortium will work closely with partners from different aspects of society, from farmers to industry, including citizens and policy makers, through living labs and towards the establishment of evidence-based policy, and co-developed practices in agriculture. In this consortium, Euro-BioImaging will offer access to advanced imaging services to researchers through a selection of Nodes targeting topics of agroecology, plant biology, water, soil, and microorganisms.
Learn more here
canSERV
The Horizon Europe-funded canSERV project, led by BBMRI ERIC, brings together 19 partners including European life science research infrastructures and other key organizations in the field of oncology to support the EU Cancer Mission. In this project, Euro-BioImaging ERIC co-leads Work Package 2 alongside Instruct ERIC, which, in collaboration with other partner research infrastructures, will provide the biological and biomedical imaging technologies, structural biology methods, genomics and analytical pipelines for addressing fundamental cancer research questions at a molecular, cellular and whole organism level. Twenty-eight Euro-BioImaging Nodes are involved in this project, and are excited to provide their expertise in support of user projects within the context of this project.
Learn more here
EOSC4CANCER
EOSC4Cancer is a Europe-wide foundation to accelerate data-driven cancer research. Through this consortium, Euro-Bioimaging with its associated nodes will provide alignment of metadata description and development of tools to enable generic use of medical imaging data. The project is focused on FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and open data sharing in support of cancer research and will closely interlink with the canSERV project.
Learn more here
IMAGINE
The mission of the IMAGINE consortium, led by EMBL, is to develop the technologies needed to bridge the molecular scale of structure with the organismal scale of function and to bring those technologies not only to highly specialised central facilities and standard laboratory models, but make them applicable to a wide range of samples and through the Research Infrastructures make them available to all researchers. All the technologies targeted for development within IMAGINE, specifically with their application to the imaging of biological samples, are part of the Euro-BioImaging technology framework. Accordingly, Euro-BioImaging will play a central role in this project in providing input to the developments, support the validation of the technologies, and through our Nodes make the developed tools accessible.
ANERIS
Euro-BioImaging is delighted to be part of the ANERIS (operAtional seNsing lifE technologies for maRIne ecosystemS) project, coordinated by CSIC. The ANERIS Project aims to create advanced scientific instruments and techniques for detecting marine life by integrating multiple technologies, such as genomics, imaging-biooptics, and participatory sciences. To accomplish this, a cooperative strategy will be employed, engaging all interested parties, including academic institutions, corporations, non-governmental organizations, and governmental agencies.
Learn more: https://www.eurobioimaging.eu/news/aneris-project-towards-operational-marine-biology/