UK Gives £10 million to Increase Bioscience Data Handling Capacity

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), based at Hinxton near Cambridge, has received a £10 million (USD14.3 million) grant from the UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to dramatically increase EBI's data storage and handling capacity. The BBSRC funding is expected to help fuel the success of ELIXIR, a large-scale, EU-funded, data-storage project. The grant adds to the USD 6.3 million that the European Commission awarded to launch the project a year ago and an additional USD 2.5 million that several Swedish funding agencies pledged towards the project earlier this year.

Huge amounts of biological data are being generated daily throughout Europe. In order to use the data efficiently and to accelerate advances, such as the development of new drugs or higher yielding crops, scientists require better ways to deal with the flood of information.

"The UK's decision to invest in ELIXIR is an important milestone in creating the infrastructure for biological information in Europe," said Janet Thornton, EMBL-EBI Director and ELIXIR coordinator. "The EBI will form the hub of a network of ELIXIR nodes that will empower European science at the interface of biology, computing and data management - one of the most vibrant areas of contemporary research."

For more information, read http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/media/releases/2009/090825_uk_leads_european_research_with_10million_investment.html and http://www.genomeweb.com/informatics/ebi-lands-143m-uks-bbsrc-support-elixir-projects-it-infrastructure