ELIXIR

European life-science infrastructure for biological information

ELIXIR was established in 2014 as an intergovernmental organisation to ensure sustained life science resources across Europe. It presently includes 21 members and covers over 180 research organisations. ELIXIR unites Europe’s leading life science organisations in managing and safeguarding the increasing volume of data being generated by publicly funded research. ELIXIR coordinates, integrates and sustains bioinformatics resources across its member states and European Molecular Biology Laboratory and enables users in academia and industry to access services that are vital for their research.

The scientific and technical activities in ELIXIR are organised in five Platforms Data, Compute, Interoperability, Tools and Training and scientific Communities. Platforms bring together experts to define the strategy and provide services in a particular area e.g. training, data. Communities bring together scientists who work in a specific domain (e.g. Plant Sciences). Scientists develop services targeted for their own domains and give feedback on the services the Platforms provide, to make sure that the services solve real world problems.

The Finnish ELIXIR Node is operated by CSC and plays a fundamental part in broader life science research infrastructure in Europe, e.g. providing cloud computing for European biomedical organizations, for easing international access to Finnish biobanks and supporting the creation of a catalogue of national genetic variation. CSC also leads the ELIXIR Compute platform, one of the five ELIXIR platforms, with the Czech Node and EMBL-EBI. CSC plays a significant role in the ELIXIR sensitive data strategy and implementation. For example, federated user identity and access management systems including handling of access to sensitive biological data have been enabled with information technology (REMS) created by CSC.