EXCELERATE helps ELIXIR to coordinate and extend national and international data resources and ensure the delivery of world-leading life-science data services. It supports a pan-European training programme, anchored in national infrastructures, to increase bioinformatics capacity and competency. Coordinated by the ELIXIR Hub, it involves 46 partners from 17 countries.

ELIXIR Belgium is involved in two work packages.

Integrating Genomic and Phenotypic Data for Crop and Forest Plants (WP7)
WP leaders: Paul Kersey (UK) and Celia Miguel (PT). ELIXIR Belgium: Frederik Coppens.

The main objective of WP7 is to design and test an infrastructure to allow genotype-phenotype analysis for crop and forest plants based on the widest available public datasets.  The specific objectives for WP7 are available on the ELIXIR website.

ELIXIR Node Capacity Building Programme – creating a Genome Annotation Network (WP10)
WP leaders: Jiří Vondrášek (CZ) and Bengt Persson (SE). ELIXIR Belgium: Yves Van de Peer and Lieven Sterck.

The ELIXIR Nodes are at very different levels of maturity, ranging from national infrastructures that have existed for over a decade or more to newly formed consortia. The ELIXIR Capacity Building Programme focuses on knowledge transfer between ELIXIR’s larger and more established Nodes, and from them to newer or smaller ELIXIR Nodes in less research-intensive areas of the EU. More info on WP10 is to be found on the ELIXIR website.