Switzerland and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics hosted the recent ELIXIR Board meeting in Geneva on 13-14 April, arranging for the world famous Jet d’Eau fountain to be turned orange in the process. Further information and photos from this spectacle are available in French here.
Outcomes of the Board meeting
The ELIXIR Board meeting was attended by representatives from ELIXIR’s 11 Member countries and EMBL, four of ELIXIR's Observer countries and and guests from several other countries working towards membership - a total of 23 countries were represented at the meeting in some capacity.
Chaired by Torsten Schwede, the ELIXIR Board approved several decisions that will help progress ELIXIR’s implementation, including:
- Approving the ELIXIR Norway Collaboration Agreement with the ELIXIR Hub.
- Norway now joins Switzerland, Sweden, Finland and EMBL in having signed the Collaboration Agreement. Work will progress throughout 2015 to develop the Service Delivery Plans that will set out the detailed services run by the Node as part of ELIXIR.
- Approving the strengthening of ELIXIR’s independent ethics advice
- ELIXIR will appoint to its Scientific Advisory Board additional members who have expertise in ethics. The ELIXIR Hub will shortly open a public call for experts.
- Approving the ELIXIR Annual Report for 2014, which will be formally published in the coming period
- Discussing plans for ELIXIR 'Commissioned Services' in 2016
- ELIXIR plans to fund larger-scale and longer-term Commissioned Services over the coming years. These services will be funded by the ELIXIR budget and will be implemented by ELIXIR Nodes. The Board will approve the tender and governance procedure in its next meeting, with the expectation that the tender process for the first Commissioned Services opening in 2016.
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