Networking the European Systems Biology Centres
ERASysBio brought together once more representatives of European Systems Biology Centres and Departments, and funding agencies, to foster the networking between the Centres, to initiate the development of the proposal for an Infrastructure for Systems Biology (ISBE), and to discuss additional opportunities for integration of European Systems Biology Centres.
PROGRAMME REPORT MEETING PAPERS
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1st Meeting of the European Systems Biology Centres
7-8 March 2007, London, UK
The purpose of the first meeting was to identify areas of common interest where links between the different institutions can be maximised and to consider any specific challenges faced by such cooperation.
(i) to identify areas for the development
of joint strategies in the context of
current and future experimental, computational, technological and sociocultural
challenges;
(ii) to identify areas where collaborations between centres can be established;
(iii) to identify areas where interventions can be applied, indicating the
vehicles/mechanisms to implement them.
PROGRAMME and PARTICIPANTS REPORT
2nd Meeting of the European Systems Biology Centres
11-12 September 2008, Duesseldorf, DE
On 11th-12th September 2008, the ERA-NET for Systems Biology, ERASysBio,
organised a second meeting which brought together representatives of the majority of
the established Centres for Systems Biology in Europe and representatives from
funding agencies.
The 2008 meeting was dedicated mainly to develop proposals for networking the
Centres.
In addition the participants
were given an overview of ESFRI – European Strategy Forum of Research
Infrastructures - and its mission, the ESFRI Roadmap and its associated Working
Groups, the range of projects selected as mature and the process leading up to
their launch, and the European Infrastructure for Systems Biology (ISBE) as an
emerging infrastructure which required urgently the input and support from its
scientific community. The leaders of Systems Biology Centres were invited to get
together and come up with a proposal for a systems biology infrastructure, in a
way similar to the physical sciences communities.
One of the outcomes of the meeting was that, by initiative of Jaroslav Stark
at Imperial College, it was agreed that a working party was set up to develop a
proposal.
PROGRAMME and PARTICIPANTS REPORT
3rd Meeting of the European Systems Biology Centres
23 October 2009, London, UK
The working group that was then established had the task to develop an outline for ISBE, in consultation with the scientific community of European Systems Biology Centres and other relevant stakeholders. The ISBE outline was circulated to the community. It provided the basis of the ISBE application, to be submitted to ESFRI in November 2009.
ERASysBio believes that ISBE should be developed by the European Systems Biology Centres, as its primary users, and operate as an integrated multidisciplinary infrastructure for the European scientific community. The ERASysBio 3rd Meeting of the Systems Biology Centres offered the Centres the chance to get together once more to discuss and agree on the infrastructure proposal. The Centres’ participation was to ensure the effective progress of ISBE and the delivery of an infrastructure that benefits all.
The objectives of the meeting were to seek consensus on the concept of a
systems biology infrastructure, its structure and content. The participants were
also to consider how centres can work together in developing a European
Infrastructure for Systems Biology that stimulates the integration of the
systems biology community in the areas of training, data management and data
sharing, tools and technology development and academic-industrial links.