Past Partners

Forschungszentrum Jülich

Forschungszentrum Jülich manages one of the most important supercomputing centres in the world and operates supercomputers of the highest performance class in Europe. In cooperation with renowned hardware and software vendors like IBM, Intel and ParTec, it meets the challenges that arise from the development of exaflop systems. As a member of the German Gauss Centre for Supercomputing, it has coordinated the construction of the European research infrastructure “PRACE – Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe” since 2008. In July 2010, Forschungszentrum Jülich has joined the Centre Europeen de Calcul Atomique et Moleculaire, CECAM, as an active node. The Jülich CECAM Node is active in the fields of Computational Science, Soft Matter Research and Materials Sciences. It has a strong focus on computer simulations, where methods, algorithms and codes are developed and applied on various types of high performance parallel computer architectures. Forschungszentrum Jülich has recently recognized the relevance of computational molecular biology by establishing an Institute of advanced simulation (IAS-5/INM-9), particularly dedicated to HPC-based biomolecular simulation. Forschungszentrum Jülich and its institutes are involved in several areas of research within the Human Brain Project, the European Union FET Flagship Initiative to understand the human brain using simulation. In order to make it a reality, researchers from 23 countries are working together to build a unique infrastructure that will allow them to establish and further develop a brain research and information technology network. Some of the deliverables of BioExcel will be directly employed in the Human Brain Project, which is expected to last for ten years.

The University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh is represented in BioExcel by two world-class institutes: EPCC and the Roslin Institute. Both have extensive international engagements, which they will link into the work of the CoE. EPCC is a leading member of the international HPC community. It is recognised worldwide for its work in HPC research and leads national, European and International collaborations. In particular it leads the CRESTA FP7 Exascale software project, the FORTISSIMO FP7 HPC for Manufacturing SMEs project and is a key member of the PRACE Research Infrastructure and projects. At the same time it is part of the Intel Parallel Computing Center initiative and is also an NVIDIA CUDA Research Center. It is part of Cray’s Exascale Research Initiative in Europe, which is part of its Exascale Technology Centre. The Roslin Institute is a leading member of the worldwide biosciences community focussed on enhancing the lives of animals and humans through worldclass research in animal biology. As such it collaborates with similar centres of excellence around the world. In addition to extensive international academic interactions, over 60 international commercial partners are engaged with the institute.

The University of Manchester

University of Manchester‘s eScience Lab research group led by Professor Carole Goble has since 2001 been focused on research and development around tools designed for data driven and computational research, supporting the coming together of people, data and methods in a particular research area; this is also know as an e-laboratory. The group’s research and projects span a wide array of topics, including eScience, bioinformatics, biodiversity, scholarly communication, reproducible science, workflows, linked data, provenance, community building and knowledge representation. The team have been consistently publishing software as Open Source and have since its beginning advocated and supported Open Science best practices across domains.

The group is involved in multiple European initiatives, with a strong presence within the European-wide life science organization ELIXIR; Goble is Head of Node of ELIXIR-UK, and the group participate in EU projects EXCELERATE (FAIR data, TeSS training portal), CORBEL (data access and integration), EOSCPilot (open service platforms), EOSC-Life (incl. a European wide workflow repository), FAIRplus, IBISBA (synthetic biology) and Synthesis+. The eScience Lab plays an important part of providing Research Software Engineer training as co-lead of Software Sustainability Institute UK and running UK-wide activities for Data and Software Carpentry. Through ISBE activities the group has a key role in FAIRDOM (main developers of FAIRDOMHub) and had an integral part in founding Open PHACTS. International collaborations include Common Workflow Language (where the group has been heavily involved since its early days), Research Objects (led by the group), BioCompute Objects, Mendeley Data and NIH Data Commons, European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiatives, Research Data Alliance (RDA), Force11, and the Apache Software Foundation.

European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL-EBI)

EMBL-EBI is the outstations of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory that has a long-standing mission to collect, organise and make available databases for biomolecular science. The EMBL-EBI makes available a collection of databases along with tools to search, download and analyse their content. These databases include nucleotide sequences (European Nucleotide Archive), protein sequences (UniProt), structures (Protein Databank in Europe), genome annotation (Ensembl), gene expression information (ArrayExpress), molecular interactions (IntAct) and pathways (Reactome). Connected to these are linking and descriptive data resources such as protein motifs (InterPro), ontologies and many others. In many of these efforts the EMBL-EBI is a European node in global data-sharing agreements and hosts the ELIXIR hub and leads the Cloud Task Force within Elixir and is one of the main contributors to the Elixir Technical Services activities.

Ian Harrow Consulting

Ian Harrow Consulting (IHC) is a UK-based consultancy company which provides expert services in Project Management, Bioinformatics and Text Mining for numerous clients in the Life Science industry. IHC participates in precompetitive collaboration through associate partnership with the Open PHACTS foundation, management of projects for Pistoia Alliance and previous representation of Pfizer at the EMBL-EBI Industry programme. IHC is involved with global consortia such as Global Alliance for Genomics and Health and ELIXIR, the EU infrastructure for Life Science information. IHC brings an extensive network of professional connections from over 30 years experience working in the Pharmaceutical and Life Science industry.

The University of Jyväskylä

The University of Jyväskylä is an internationally renowned research university and an expert in education that focuses on human and natural sciences. JYU will coordinate the development of the multi-scale QM/MM interface and will use the new interface to carry out the use cases focused on rational design of fluorescent proteins for bionanoscopy.

Across Limits

AcrossLimits is a dynamic SME based in Malta that offers creative technology solutions, and provides specialist consultancy services, to many European countries. We are very active in various international programs covering diverse areas of interest which include: eLearning, eHealth, eGovernment, Entrepreneurship, digital culture and in the refinement of business models making them suitable for the upcoming Single Digital Market. We are strong networkers and, thanks to years of presence on the European stage, we have links to all sectors – academia, NGOs, businesses and governments. AcrossLimits maintains strong links with the business angel and investor communities in Europe and beyond, and assists in the creation of startup companies for research entities and consortia who want to take their results to market.