The diversity, complexity and volume, as well as privacy and regulatory considerations, necessitate a collaborative and federated approach to life-science data. For scientists to find and share data across Europe and world-wide, ELIXIR needs to continuously develop and connect its services. The international ecosystem provided by ELIXIR – with 220 institutes in 23 Nodes, connecting hundreds of bioinformatics services – is globally unique and a competitive advantage for European research. Through our national Nodes ELIXIR has the geographical spread, service portfolio and expertise to fulfil our ambition that every European project uses FAIR data based on common standards, tools and services. The initial operational phase of ELIXIR, supported by the H2020 ELIXIR-EXCELERATE project, focussed on the coordination and delivery of bioinformatics services from national Nodes. This lay the foundation for a coordinated European infrastructure. ELIXIR-CONVERGE will build on these achievements to deliver another critical component: the provisioning, across Europe, of distributed local support for data management based on a toolkit for researchers that enables lifecycle management for their research data according to international standards. ELIXIR-CONVERGE will develop the national operations of such a distributed research infrastructure to drive good data management, reproducibility and reuse in a heterogeneous funding landscape. Over 36 months and with partners from our 23 Nodes, ELIXIR-CONVERGE takes the next step to realise a European data federation where interconnected national operations, strategically managed via national research infrastructure roadmaps, allow users to extract knowledge from life science’s large, diverse and distributed datasets. By connecting ELIXIR Nodes to provide FAIR data management as a service, ELIXIR-CONVERGE will build national capacity and create a blueprint for operating sustainable Nodes in distributed research infrastructures.

Our vision for a new type of cancer treatment is based on an implantable therapeutic system capable of ‘programmable’ on-demand delivery of drugs directly to the tumor. We conceive an implantable iontronic switch (bioSWITCH) to enable a spatiotemporally controlled administration of highly potent chemotherapeutics, without the need for systemic administration of (pro)drugs or drug conjugates. This radically new technology will be realized by a combination of next-level tools. As a result, bioSWITCH can generate previously unobtainable discrete as well as continuous drug concentration profiles at the tumor site, and thus allows for the use of highly potent drugs that are otherwise not applicable due to high cytotoxicity. The goal is to demonstrate the technology’s potential to effectively interfere with tumor progression using a xenograft pancreas cancer mouse model. Efficiently shrinking tumors in size allows for surgical resection of previously non-operable tumors and dramatically increases survival rates. Our consortium of world leading academics and pioneering SMEs will ensure the translation of this disruptive technology into the market to maximize the socioeconomic impact.

Future advanced neuroprostheses will need to transfer orders of magnitude more information to the brain than currently possible. This is most urgently needed in visual prostheses. Improving the electrode count will be part of the solution: a next generation of visual prosthesis will most probably be based on the insertion of over 1000 microelectrodes in the visual cortex. Still, current visual prostheses use very simple stimulation patterns, in which at most the stimulation amplitude is modulated. We propose to explore a second, complementary approach to brute scaling: using the available electrodes more efficiently by applying sophisticated stimulation protocols. Our main objective is to achieve a fundamental breakthrough in the spatial resolution of electrical brain stimulation to restore vision, obtaining a resolution of at least 20X the number of electrodes that are physically present. The vast number of possible stimulation combinations calls for a radically new research methodology, integrating modeling and state-of-the-art neuroscience methods at every spatial scale (from single neurons to the entire brain) in a closed-loop optimization process. With this combination of techniques, we will study which stimulation patterns effectively induce sufficient neural activations in higher areas (i.e. ignition) and cause visual perceptions. Thus, we will be able to explore the vast, hyperdimensional search space of possible stimulation patterns, and produce a set of in vivo tested stimulation patterns that are capable of eliciting distinguishable physiological and behavioral responses. The obtained order-of-magnitude improvement in resolution will spur the development of breakthrough prostheses that will be widely adopted by blind patients, and bring the field of neural interfacing to the next level.

The promise of more efficient lead discovery is fuelling the enthusiasm for fragment-based lead discovery (FBLD). In this approach, highly sensitive biochemical and biophysical screening technologies are being used to detect the low affinity binding of low molecular weight compounds (the so-called fragments) to protein targets that are involved in pathophysiological processes. By investigating the molecular interactions between fragment hit(s) and the target protein, a detailed understanding of the binding event is obtained. This enables the rational and efficient optimisation of the hit fragment. The optimised compounds represent high quality leads for drug development. The necessary FBLD technologies and approaches have emerged mainly from small and specialised biotech companies. At present, FBLD is being adopted throughout pharmaceutical sciences, including by pharmaceutical companies, SMEs and academic research groups. So far, the necessary training that is needed to obtain an holistic view of the possibilities and opportunities that FBLD provides is missing, most likely because the highly multidisciplinary nature of the FBLD work is difficult to capture within one (academic) institute. Therefore, we have established FragNet as a dedicated FBLD training network. The consortium consists of the most prominent pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies and academic groups that have jointly shaped the FBLD research area. FragNet is committed to train 15 ESRs in all facets of FBLD using the combined technologies, skills and knowledge. This will include both research (e.g., technologies on the interface of chemistry and biology) and transferable skill sets (e.g., writing, media training, entrepreneurship and thorough understanding of scientific knowledge transfer). This will enable the ESRs to excel in today’s drug discovery and chemical biology programmes that are performed in public and private organisations in the pharmaceutical sciences.

Renewable energy sources like wind turbines require large-scale, stationary energy storage systems to balance out fluctuations in energy generation. FlowCamp will advance the development of one of the most promising storage systems: redox-flow batteries (RFBs). The recruited fellows will develop materials (membranes, electrodes, electrolytes, catalysts, sealing materials) and macrohomogeneous models for three next generation RFBs (hydrogen-bromine, organic and zinc-air systems). They will then upscale the new systems to prototype level (TRL4/5), and validate them using the cutting-edge battery testing facilities available for the prestigious German-funded RedoxWind project at Fraunhofer ICT. The new RFB technologies can be combined in energy storage systems tailored to a wide variety of application scenarios, with lower cost, longer service life and higher efficiency than conventional (e.g. Li-ion) storage devices. Through FlowCamp, 15 ESRs will gain a unique skill-set comprising electrochemistry, material science and cell design/ engineering, as well as an overview of different RFB technologies and their implementation at prototype level. FlowCamp will consequently go far beyond existing electrochemical training, in a field with a high and growing research demand. The employability of the ESRs will be further enhanced by high-quality individualized training in scientific and complementary skills, and a structured network program of training units moving them from theoretical investigations towards industrial application and entrepreneurship. The active involvement of industrial partners, secondments in applied research and industry and a strong research and training emphasis on market requirements will furthermore provide them with the intersectoral experience needed for a career in electrochemical energy storage.