28-May-2013
Instruct is pleased to welcome Spain as a new Instruct member state. Spain joins nine countries that are already members; Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom, ensuring Spanish researchers a single point of access to the technology and expertise offered through Instruct. By bringing together the different disciplines, technologies and experts in European biology, Instruct is already helping to make the vision of truly integrated biology a reality which in turn increases competitiveness of European research.
Prof. Dave Stuart, Instruct Director, said; “Instruct is delighted to welcome Spain as a member state, our partners in Madrid have been an integral part of the Instruct vision since its inception and Instruct can provide real opportunities to support research in Spain”.
In the first two years of operation Instruct has provided access to scientists from around Europe to first class technology and a second call for porposals will be launched soon. A program of research and development grants to fund challenging ideas in integrated structural biology and a training program is already under way. Instruct provides free access to some of the most advanced technology in the world, such as sample preparation for cryo-electron tomography using ion beam milling housed at the Max Planck Institute Martinsried in Germany and the automated system for mammalian expression housed at Oxford in the UK, both of which are at the frontier of current technology. In Spain, the Instruct Image Processing Center (I2PC) at the CNB-CSIC is the European Reference Centre for infrastructure provision in Image Processing in Transmission Electron Microscopy and X-ray Microscopy. It provides support to structural biologists, helping them to maximize the extraction of biological knowledge from their microscopy images. A full catalogue of the accessible technology is available on the Instruct Hub.
A single Instruct proposal is used to access all the technology available at all of the Instruct centres, and is flexible enough to accommodate collaborative work in addition to more straightforward access. Online applications are reviewed for scientific excellence and technical feasibility. The Instruct website is at the heart of what Instruct offers, from the research proposal submission and the database of technologies to the forums and collaborative workspaces. All researchers from all disciplines are invited to register so that they can make the most of Instruct.
Spain formally joined Instruct at a signing ceremony coinciding with the First Biennial Structural Biology Meeting in Heidelberg on 22nd to 24th of May 2013 attended by more than 200 European Scientists, the Principal Investigators of each of the Instruct Centres and national funding agencies.
To learn more about it (in Spanish) go the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad and CSIC pages. In English to our press release
