Instruct-ERIC is a pan-European research infrastructure in structural biology, making high-end technologies and methods available to all European researchers.

Structural Biology is one of the key frameworks on which we interpret molecular and cellular functions. The main experimental technologies are complementary, and increasingly link detailed atomic structure with cellular context.

Structural Biology is currently in the middle of a revolution enabled by significant advances in the tools (direct electron detectors in EM, advances in synchrotron sources and detectors, XFELs, ultra-high field NMR, super-resolution cryo-light miscroscopy).

Researchers from Instruct member countries can request access to the service/technologies offered through the Instruct-ERIC Centres. (Twitter: @instructhub).

Horizon2020

Horizon2020 In addition to the core activities, Instruct-ERIC is actively working in partnership with others across the Life Sciences field to share expertise and work together on European projects which will benefit the Life Science community more generally. Horizon 2020 (H2020) is the EU Research and Innovation Programme which provides funding in key research areas. Details of our projects are given below, many of which relate to improving research infrastructure, data and training.  

EOSC-Life

EOSC-Life brings together the 13 Biological and Medical ESFRI research infrastructures (BMS RIs) to create an open collaborative space for digital biology. It is our joint response to the challenge of analysing and reusing the prodigious amounts of data produced by life-science. Managing and integrating this data is beyond the capabilities of most individual end-users and institutes. By publishing data and tools in a Europe-wide cloud EOSC-Life aims to bring the capabilities of big science projects to the wider research community. Federated user access (AAI) will allow transnational resource access and authorisation. EOSC-Life establishes a novel access model for the BMS RI: through EOSC scientists would gain direct access to FAIR data and tools in a cloud environment available throughout the European Research Area.

RI-VIS

RI-VIS is a Horizon 2020 project launched in February 2019 to expand the visibility of European research infrastructures. RI-VIS will target new communities within Europe such as new scientific communities, policy-makers, industrial communities and the general public, but also to reach out to new target regions internationally through cultivating partnerships between European and international research infrastructures and local experts. RI-VIS is supported by its consortium of 13 partners from 12 research infrastructures in the biomedical, social, and environmental sciences. The project is coordinated by the Instruct-ERIC hub team.

EU-LAC ResInfra

The main goal of the EU-LAC ResInfra project, 'Towards a new EU-CELAC partnership in Research Infrastructures', is to enhance the bi-regional collaboration regarding Research Infrastructures. Within this project Instruct-ERIC is responsible for the Pilot on Infrastructure cooperation and coordination on Structural Biological for Health. The project is a Horizon 2020 Coordination and Support Action that will run until 31 May 2022.

iNEXT-Discovery

iNEXT-Discovery aims to enable access to structural biology research infrastructures for all European researchers, and especially non-experts in structural biology. For that reason it brings together a diversity of large research facilities and other groups in a single consortium. Instruct provides the proposal system for the project and the use of our facilities also contributing to networking and communication activities. Instruct is responsible of the sustainability planning for the activities of the project.

TRANSVAC2

TRANSVAC2 focuses on making new vaccines quicker. The  consortium comprises a comprehensive collection of leading European institutions that propose to further advance with the previous initiative towards the establishment of a fully operational and sustainable European vaccine R&D infrastructure. It bridges the translational gap in biomedical research, and supports cooperation between public vaccine R&D institutions of excellence, related initiatives and networks in Europe, and industrial partners.

Transvac-DS

TRANSVAC-DS (Design study for a European vaccine infrastructure) builds on the outstanding achievements from TRANSVAC1/2 and aims to further explore and advance the conceptual and technical design of a Pan-European vaccine infrastructure. The main objective and output of TRANSVAC-DS will be a conceptual design report, including a five-year business plan together with an implementation plan, that will describe in detail the maturity of the concept and be the basis for the establishment of a permanent and sustainable vaccine infrastructure.

ERIC-Forum  

ERIC stands for European Research Infrastructure Consortium and is one of the 5 European legal instruments especially set up by the European Union in 2009 to provide a legal framework for (multisite) European research infrastructures. The objectives of the forum are to identify common challenges affecting the Forum Members as entities subject to the ERIC Regulation; to collectively response to these challenges; to contribute to the further development of the ERIC Regulation, ESFRI framework and European and international research context; and lastly to foster the visibility, impact and sustainability of ERICs.

Instruct-ERIC Events

Keep up to date with structural biology events from Instruct and around the world!