Project: The Flemish contribution to the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC-ERIC)

2021-01-01 – 2024-12-31

Abstract

EMBRC-ERIC, or the European Marine Biological Resource Centre, is a distributed European Research Infrastructure Cluster, which provides and supports large scale and high quality marine science in Europe. It was established to bring together the distributed infrastructures and HR in European marine research groups to answer Europe's challenges related to food, health and global change. With 9 members (Belgium, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the UK), this ERIC offers access to a portfolio of research platforms, biological resources, analytical services, training, expert advice and data, to users from academia to industry. For Belgium, 5 Operators are involved: 4 Flemish (UGent, VLIZ, KU Leuven and UHasselt) and 1 federal (RBINS). With this proposal, the Flemish partners aim at delivering top-level services and to coordinate and expand the training component for EMBRC. By participating in EMBRC, Flanders will be on the front stage of the Blue Economy scenario, with fundamental and applied research and education activities in sustainable aquaculture, exploitation of living resources, blue biotechnology, ecosystem health and marine management.