Tuesday 25 May, 2009
(Hosted by: Harrison Goddard Foote)
(Organiser Asia-Pacific Technology Network)
Chairman:
- Dr Richard Williams, Partner, Harrison Goddard Foote
Speaker:
This will be a briefing on Europe's Biological and Medical Sciences Research Infrastructures (BMS RIs). Declan will introduce the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (see the end of this page for more details on ESFRI). This has produced a roadmap which includes the following BMS RIs:
- BBMRI (Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure)
- EATRIS (European advanced translational research infrastructure in medicine)
- ECRIN ( Pan-European infrastructure for clinical trials and biotherapy)
- ERINHA ( European High Security BSL 4 Laboratories)
- ELIXIR (European life science infrastructure for biological information)
- EMBRC ( European Marine Biological Resource Centre)
- EU-OPENSCREEN ( European Infrastructure of Open Screening Platforms for Chemical Biology)
- Euro –BioImaging (European Biomedical Imaging Infrastructure)
- INFRAFRONTIER (Infrastructure for phenotyping and archiving of model mammalian genomes)
- INSTRUCT ( An Integrated Structural Biology Infrastructure for Europe)
- ISBE ( Infrastructure for Systems Biology Europe)
Location: Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, 95 Chancery Lane London WC2A 1DT
Nearest tube station: Chancery Lane
Timing: 09:00 - 10:00
Pricing:
- Free to Harrison Goddard Foote clients and APTN's annual supporters
- £40 + VAT (Executives)
- £20 + VAT (Asian citizens/institutions, officials, executives from Small Companies)
- £10 + VAT (Academics),
- Free for the Media
Declan Kirrane
is founder and Managing Director of ISC, Brussels. ISC specializes in science and R&D public affairs, policy analysis and information dissemination. In 1994 Declan established the CORDIS (Community Research and Development Information Service) on-line dissemination service at the beginning of FP4. Prior to that he was Edtor of the CORDIS News Service. Declan has variously edited the Commission’s CORDIS focus, Innovation and Technology Transfer Newsletter and European Dialogue. He has also lectured widely on EU science policy and implementing programs, and has developed R&D and innovation strategies for public and private sector organizations. ISC is currently contracted to the European Commission, US Department of Energy’s Office of Science, EUREKA and the European Patent Office, amongst others.
Dr Richard Williams
is a partner in the London office of Harrison Goddard Foote, which together with HGFLaw solicitors continues to be the fastest growing patent and trademark attorney practice in the UK, covering all technical areas and representing global corporate clients as well as SMEs, Universities and research institutions both in the UK and abroad. Richard heads up the life sciences group of the firm and has expertise in patent procurement and strategy as well as European Patent oppositions/appeals where he is a regular advocate before the tribunals of the European Patent Office. Before entering private practice more than 20 years ago, Richard was a post-doc at the former East Malling Research Station working on a then EEC Biotechnology Action Program project in plant science.
European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI)
ESFRI was established in April 2002 to produce the “European Roadmap on Research Infrastructures” reflecting a common mid-to long-term strategy for European Member States. The first roadmap was published in 2006: European Commission decided to support the “preparatory phase” for the planning work of the RIs of the ESFRI roadmap through an FP7 RI call for proposals under the Capacity Specific Programme. The main goal of this action was to provide catalytic and leveraging support, helping RIs to reach the level of technical, legal, and financial maturity required to enable their construction. This is how the BMS RIs which are the subject of this White Paper have come into existence. The financial support within the FP7 covers the initial set up stage that should allow the different RIs to define and develop mechanisms that can provide the necessary funding after the preparatory phase.
The current Spanish Council Presidency and the subsequent Belgium Presidency will support the further implementation of the ESFRI roadmap on RIs. They will facilitate discussions on European strategy for RIs and on the decision making process to enable the implementation of the ESFRI Roadmap. Management and financial issues, along with the governance structures of these RIs within the ERA, will be addressed.
ESFRI, the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, is a strategic instrument to develop the scientific integration of Europe and to strengthen its international outreach. The competitive and open access to high quality Research Infrastructures supports and benchmarks the quality of the activities of European scientists, and attracts the best researchers from around the world.
The mission of ESFRI is to support a coherent and strategy-led approach to policy-making on research infrastructures in Europe, and to facilitate multilateral initiatives leading to the better use and development of research infrastructures, at EU and international level.
ESFRI's delegates are nominated by the Research Ministers of the Member and Associate Countries, and include a representative of the Commission, working together to develop a joint vision and a common strategy. This strategy aims at overcoming the limits due to fragmentation of individual policies and provides Europe with the most up-to-date Research Infrastructures, responding to the rapidly evolving Science frontiers, advancing also the knowledge-based technologies and their extended use.
Since it was formed in 2002 at the behest of the European Council, ESFRI has witnessed significant advances towards unity and international impact in the field of research infrastructures. The publication of the first Roadmap for pan-European research infrastructures in 2006 was a key contributing factor, and several projects are now entering the realization phase. The Forum is determined to sustain the momentum in the implementation of the projects on the Roadmap, to expand the outreach to those scientific fields which are still evolving their conceptual approach in this direction, and to increase the involvement of all Countries by developing ad-hoc Regional policies. The first update of the ESFRI Roadmap is scheduled for release at the end of this year, in the Fifth European Conference on Research Infrastructures to be held in Paris on 9 and 10 December 2008.
To keep Europe at the rapidly evolving forefront of science and technology, and to increase the capacity to meet the needs of the EU and World scientific community, much remains to be done: ESFRI looks forward to the challenging times ahead