Part 3
Projects & Landmarks
Health & Food / Landmark

EMBRC ERIC

European Marine Biological Resource Centre

A world-class platform for fundamental and applied research on marine bioresources and marine ecosystems

description

The European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC) is a distributed Research Infrastructures providing a strategic delivery mechanism for excellent and large-scale marine science in Europe. EMBRC offers services to users from academia, industry, technology and education in all sectors in the fields of marine biology and ecology, particularly supporting the development of blue biotechnologies. Users will be able to easily search EMBRC services and prices and make requests on the EMBRC access portal on the EMBRC website. The EMBRC investigation capacity and capability covers the whole range of marine biodiversity, using approaches ranging from molecular biology to ecology, chemistry, bioinformatics and mathematics, and to integrative biology. EMBRC key thematic areas include marine biodiversity and ecosystem function, developmental biology and evolution, marine products and resources − biotechnology, aquaculture, fisheries − and biomedical science.

In the ESFRI Roadmap since 2008, EMBRC established the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) in 2018.

activity

Marine biodiversity is becoming a major target for fundamental science as well as an increasingly important resource for food, energy and industrial applications. EMBRC will provide key facilities, equipment and services to access and study marine ecosystems and biodiversity, to develop key enabling technologies and to deliver training for staff and users as well as joint development activities to improve access to marine biological resources and marine models. EMBRC will develop system administration and data integration and connect to important e-Infrastructures in life and environmental sciences. The RI is at a pivotal position between biological sciences, biomedical sciences and agronomical, ecological and environmental science, with a unique potential to attract new actors in marine biology. It will deliver new resources and new services, leading to new processes and products for Blue Growth. EMBRC addresses Europe’s Grand Challenges, including Biodiversity, Food Security and Competitive Industry. In particular, the RI complies with the following demands: respond to growing demand for bioresources, develop sustainable new materials, strengthen knowledge for health research and train future scientists.

EMBRC will act as a centre for knowledge transfer and as a core technology infrastructure for the utilisation of marine bioresources. It will provide the framework to significantly enhance interactions between science and industry, notably in the key domains of resource management and conservation, aquaculture and blue biotechnology. It will offer access to the infrastructure sites, on-site or remote access to biological resources and analytical services as well as virtual access to data. It will help to coordinate the negotiation of Material Transfer Agreements and host and collaborative agreements, in order to avoid restrictions in accessing the Research Infrastructure.

impact

EMBRC members operate their centres, facilities, laboratories mostly in Marine Research Stations that are located in maritime peripheral European regions. Thus, EMBRC Research Infrastructures are often geographically separated from major areas of industry concentrations; they are located in areas with lower economies and unemployment rates sometimes above the European or their respective national averages. EMBRC nodes help to overcome isolation of the regions and to build trans-regional/national complementarities and synergies. EMBRC not only evidences the territorial socio-economical impact but it has also the potential to provide this impact via its outcome of research and innovation strategies using its biological resources and technological platforms. This kind of socio-economic impact would have wider and maybe also more important impact as it could be showed across all EU countries.

EMBRC has in recent years developed closer collaboration with relevant industries. It can be expected that EMBRC will play a central role in addressing the development of bioresources and contribute to establish a prominent European Blue Bioeconomy.

type
distributed
legal status
ERIC, 2018
political support
lead country
FR
members countries
BE, EL, ES, IL, IT, NO, PT, UK
The full list of research institutions involved must be found in the website of the RI
timeline
Roadmap Entry
2008
Preparation Phase
2011-2014
Implementation/Construction Phase
2014-2016
Operation Start
2017
estimated costs
capital value
164.4 M€
design
15.7 M€
preparation
4.9 M€
construction
92 M€
operation
11.2 M€/year
headquarters

EMBRC ERIC
Paris, France