\ Innovazione \ Area Science Park becomes new member of ELIXIR-IT

Area Science Park has joined the network of ELIXIR, an intergovernmental organisation pooling life-sciences resources from across Europe. This includes databases, software tools, training materials, cloud storage and supercomputers. ELIXIR’s aim is to coordinate these resources to form a unified infrastructure. ELIXIR makes it easier for scientists to find and share data, exchange expertise and agree on best practices, helping them to acquire knowledge on how living organisms function.

Through the Technological Innovation Research Institute Area Science Park manages cutting-edge research infrastructure and performs pioneering research in the fields of life sciences, materials science and data science, with the use of its three pioneering laboratories: Genomics and Epigenomics Laboratory (LAGE), Electron Microscopy Laboratory (LAME) and Data Engineering Laboratory (LADE). The Italian Hub of ELIXIR, coordinated by the Italian National Research Council, currently includes 28 partners, including research institutes, universities and technology institutions.

ELIXIR-IT aims to unite all Italian researchers in the field of bioinformatics, promoting sharing and development of expertise, integrating the various Italian bioinformatics resources recognised at international level and contributing to their integration into European infrastructure.

The Technological Innovation Research Institute hosts and coordinates various laboratories dedicated to life sciences, including through the PRP@CERIC project, and the services of ORFEO, a datacentre optimised to handle computational biology workflows.

Specifically, the ELIXIR-IT platform will see integration of DPCfam, a machine-learning method for automatically identifying protein families from large datasets, developed and managed by the Data Engineering Laboratory.