Following approval from the Instruct Council, researchers from Greece and Slovenia now are now members of the Instruct family and can participate in the entire portfolio of Instruct services, including the full technology catalogue, internships, training programmes and R&D funding.
Greece previously held Observer status, and is now a member. Slovenia applied for membership directly. Both countries are now part of the international distributed research infrastructure, joining Belgium, Czech Republic, EMBL, Finland, France, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and United Kingdom.
Harald Schwalbe, Director of Instruct-ERIC, said, “These memberships are major steps forward extending our distributed infrastructure in Integrated Structural Biology into central and southeast Europe. Given the major challenges on European society, enlarging our community will increase European cohesion and competitiveness. Recent examples have documented the impact of integrated structural biology for European innovation”.
Both Greece and Slovenia have a long history of structural biology expertise; the experience that they can bring to the consortium and the innovation that they can bring to the 11 Instruct centres as part of access visits will have profound effects on the structural biology community.
Dimosthenis Sarigiannis, Director and Chairman of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Greece said, “It is a great honor for the Greek Structural Biologists whose joint efforts, patience, and perseverance to become full members of the ESFRI Landmark Instruct, have been rewarded. We plan for Greece, through NHRF, to become a regional hub for Structural Biology, develop the community further through access to Instruct Centres, and build synergies with national and European RIs contributing to the consolidation of the European Research Infrastructures ecosystem”.
Marjetka Podobnik of the National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia said, “Slovenian scientists are very pleased that Slovenia has become a member of Instruct-ERIC. As active members of the excellent Instruct-ERIC community, we will continue to strive for high quality research that addresses the great challenges of our time”.
Researchers in Greece and Slovenia will be able to apply for funded access to Instruct-ERIC services from 1 July 2023.
Researchers worldwide can access Instruct-ERIC services – those in member countries and organisations can receive funded access to technology and equipment in structural biology.
This is a reminder to apply for the Instruct-ERIC R&D Pilot Call - get funding of up to €15,000!
Closing 14:00 CEST on 15 April, the Instruct-ERIC R&D Funding Call invites early career researchers to submit proposals to access Instruct technology, equipment, and expertise from our 27 facilities across Europe for small scale pilot research projects in integrated structural biology.
Register now for the 32nd edition of the Instruct-ERIC Structure Meets Function webinar series, taking place on Zoom, 17 April at 11:00 CEST.
The latest webinar will have two speakers who have accessed the Instruct-ERIC facilities, expertise, and machinery via the ISIDORe project.
Talk 1: Nikitas Georgiou - National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Title: Potential anti-inflammatory drugs
Talk 2: Séverine Padiolleau - Université de Technologie de Compiègne
Title: Identification of aptamers interacting with a protein target involved in lyme disease