Euro-BioImaging Project: !st Open Call for Nodes

Euro-BioImaging, the pan-European open access research infrastructure for biological and medical imaging technologies, invites leading European imaging facilities to submit proposals to participate. Applications to become a Euro-BioImaging node, which will accepted up to 30th April 2013, will be reviewed by a board of independent international experts.

Successful facilities will be able to upgrade their capacity in order to attract and serve transnational users, with funding secured from agencies in the node’s host country, together with the facility itself and Euro-BioImaging.

Cutting-edge and innovative imaging technologies are revolutionising the life sciences. Recent developments enable scientists to visualise and thereby better understand the processes that govern life and disease in cells and organisms. However, European life scientists often lack access to innovative imaging technologies and this can slow down scientific discoveries.

Euro-BioImaging aims to fill this gap by creating a network of geographically distributed but strongly interlinked imaging facilities. Euro-BioImaging Nodes will provide open access to advanced imaging technology for all European life scientists.

“Access to cutting-edge imaging technologies is a growing challenge for European scientists even though they are ready to travel long distances to carry out experiments with the best technology,” explains Jan Ellenberg, scientific coordinator of the project at EMBL. “Euro-BioImaging will provide access to the latest equipment, at a reasonable cost and distance. This will be a unique advantage for the European life science community – it will foster many new discoveries in biology and medicine, and drive innovation of imaging technology.”

Euro-BioImaging’s preparatory phase has been funded by the EU and coordinated by EMBL in Heidelberg. Since 2010, the 39 Euro-BioImaging partners from 15 different European countries have prepared the technological, legal and governmental framework to construct this new European research infrastructure. The project is now in the last year of the planning phase: this 1st call for nodes is the basis to start construction.