The ELIXIR Board held its autumn 2014 meeting in Hinxton, Cambridge, on 3-4 November. The key decisions and outcomes of the meeting included:
- The appointment of ELIXIR Chair and Vice Chairs for 2015
- An announcement of Spain’s decision to sign the ELIXIR Consortium Agreement
- The appointment of new member to the ELIXIR Scientific Advisory Board (SAB)
- The appointment of experts to ELIXIR’s Industry Advisory Committee
- Approval of the EMBL ELIXIR Work Programme
Chair and Vice Chairs
Torsten Schwede (Switzerland) was elected Chair of the ELIXIR Board, taking over from current Chair Alf Game. Anna Wetterbom (Sweden) and Rein Aasland (Norway) were appointed Vice Chairs. The new appointments will take force from 1 January 2015.
Scientific Advisory Board
Dr Elina Ikonen (University of Helsinki, Finland) was appointed to the ELIXIR SAB, replacing Heikki Manilla, who stepped down earlier this year.
Membership
It was announced by Spain that the Minister for Research had taken the decision to join ELIXIR as an ECA country, and now formal steps to ratify the ECA were being put in place. Spain is expected to have the ECA ratified before the ELIXIR Board meeting in spring 2015.
Spain takes decision to sign ECA
ELIXIR Nodes and Collaboration Agreements
The ELIXIR Node applications of Finland, Portugal and Israel - the most recent countries to sign the ECA and join ELIXIR - were formally approved.
The EMBL ELIXIR Work Programme was also approved. This document lists the EMBL-EBI services and resources that will be exposed via the ELIXIR infrastructure.
The Collaboration Agreements between the ELIXIR Hub and the Switzerland, Finland and Sweden Nodes were discussed and will be approved by the ELIXIR Board via written procedure in the coming weeks.
Industry Advisory Committee
An Industry Advisory Committee (IAC) for ELIXIR was appointed and Terms of Reference for the committee agreed.
Global Alliance for Genomics and Health
A decision was taken for ELIXIR to join the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health as an organisational member.