March 2016 Newsletter

Dec-Mar ongoing

Ondrej Hradil (Instruct-CZ), Dave Stuart, Lucia Banci (Instruct-IT), Jose Maria Carazo (Instruct-ES) and Susan Daenke continued their work within the Instruct Business group which supported the H2020-INFRADEV3-2016-2017 application.

22^nd December

The Instruct training committee lead by Lucia Banci announced the training programme for 2016. Instruct will offer a range of workshops delivered at Instruct Centresby internationally recognised experts. The first event took place in Israel with the course 'Workshopon the Resolution Revolution in 3D cryo-EM' organised by Instruct Centre Israel at the Weizmann Institute.

28^th January

The UK host Ministerial delegate for Instruct (UK Ministry for Business, Innovation and Skills) received the Instruct-ERIC Step 1 ERIC application on 28^th of January from the MRC. The application was submitted to the EC and receipt has been confirmed. The EC will convene an evaluation panel in the next 2 months.

3-5^th February

Dave Stuart and Susan Daenke presented Instruct work at its final meeting in Lisbon. Lorraine Gough, Callum Smith and Claudia Alen Amaro finalised Instruct contribution to BioStruct-X which finished offering access the 29^th of February reporting on activities carried out within Workpackage 10.

15^th February

Susan Daenke participated in a teleconference to coordinate Workpackages 5 and 8 of CORBEL. Instruct and Infrafrontier co-leads CORBEL WP5. Susan Daenke also represented Instruct at the CORBEL executive board and will attend the CORBEL Retreat in April.

8-10^th March

Susan Daenke represented Instruct at the 4th ERIC Network Meeting at the Flemish Arts Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and the Str-ESFRI Exchange of Experience Panel Workshop, where she was a member of the Legal Panel, chaired by Harry Tuinder. The meeting was followed by the launch of the ESFRI 2016 Roadmap at the Trippenhuis, Amsterdam. Instruct was confirmed as a landmark project after a comprehensive analysis of Instruct operations within the complex research infrastructure landscape and is included as such in the Roadmap 2106.

10^th March

Joop van den Heuvel (Instruct-DE) and Marie Christine Poterszman (Instruct-FR) lead the discussion of the Instruct Access committee towards improvement on the determination of unit costs and access reporting.

15^th March

Lorraine Gough (Instruct Finance Officer) and Claudia Alen Amaro reported to the British Council on the highly successful workshop ‘Integrative methods in Structural Biology to enhance high impact research in health and disease’ which took place in Montevideo in February. The workshop was well publicised by the Argentinian, Uruguayan and Brazilian press, the British Council UK and Instruct. You can watch with interviews to the organisers and also a summary of the projects funded by the British Council in Uruguay here.

22^nd March

Claudia Alen Amaro (Instruct Project Manager) and Callum Smith (IT Officer) chaired the first video conference of WestLife Worpackage 2 on the 22^nd March. West-Life is an initiative to develop a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) in the e-Infrastructure programme (EINFRA-9-2015).

30^th March

Dave Stuart (Instruct Director) and Susan Daenke (Instruct Hub Coordinator) lead the effort, with a small writing group, to submit a proposal ‘Instruct-Ultra, Releasing the full potential of Instruct to expand and consolidate infrastructure services for integrated structural life science research’, to the Horizon 2020 ‘DEVELOPMENT AND LONG-TERM SUSTAINABILITY OF NEW PAN-EUROPEAN RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES’ within the H2020-INFRADEV3-2016-2017 call. The call is to fund activities to achieve full implementation for research infrastructures that are of significant maturity and need to establish long-term sustainability. The proposal was submitted the 30^th of March. In addition, Instruct was included as a partner to 3 more applications submitted this month:

• 1.Alberto Podjarny (Instruct FR1), Lucia Banci (Instruct-IT) and Maria Armenia Carrondo (Instruct PT) lead the work on Instruct participation in Open-Sesame, addressing WP2016-2017: InfraSupp-01-2016 Policy and international cooperation measures for research infrastructures Support the training needs of the Synchrotron light for Experimental Science and Applications (SESAME) facility located in Jordan and the staff exchange with other European light source infrastructures to ensure its optimal use by the research community for world class research.
• 2.Susan Daenke (Instruct Hub Coordinator) lead the involvement in the proposal AARC2 Authentication and Authorisation for Research Collaboration, addressing the call EINFRA-2016-2017. Instruct’s involvement is part of our participation as WP5 co-leads in CORBEL.
• 3.Dave Stuart (Instruct Director) and Lucia Banci (Instruct-IT) lead Instruct involvement in Transvac2 European Vaccine Research and Development Infrastructure, addressing the call INFRAIA-2016-2017.

31^st March

The Instruct Hub has continued to share knowledge and best practices offering access to research infrastructure. A teleconference on the 31^st of March welcomed Rebecca Thompson from the University of Leeds and introduced ARIA (our access management system) as a solution that could be utilised for the Leeds facility & access management.

7^th April

West-Life operational committee teleconference (Claudia Alen Amaro)

19^th April

RICH Symposium on Funding Instruments for developing Research Infrastructures (Jose Maria Carazo)

20-22^nd April

CORBEL retreat of workpackage leaders (Susan Daenke)

April

As part of the Instruct training programme: In April: 'Advanced methods for the integration of diverse structural data with NMR data – 2nd Edition' Workshoporganised by Instruct-NL and 'Practical Coursein Integrative Modeling of Protein-Protein Interactions and Large Multi-Molecular Assemblie' organised by Instruct Bioinformatic Centre in Israel.

11-13^th May

EMTRAIN general assemblyThe last EMTRAIN General Assembly which the EMTRAIN Project Office will host close to Vienna is being held on 12^th May with satellite meetings for On-Course and Lifetrain being held either side on 11^th and 13^th May.

May

'EMBO PracticalCourseon the Structural Characterization of Macromolecular Complexes' organised by Instruct Centre France 2 in Grenoble and 'From 2D images to 3D structures: A practicalcourseon Electron Microscopy Single Particle Analysis' organised by Instruct Image Processing Centre in Madrid in collaboration with CCISB and CCPEM.