Two projects in which the Utrecht Computational Structural Biology group is a partner have been funded under the Horizon 2020 e-Infrastructure programme.
The first project called West-Life falls under the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) e-Infrastructure programme (EINFRA-9-2015). As the focus of structural biology is shifting from single macromolecules produced by simpler prokaryotic organisms, to the macromolecular machinery of higher organisms, structural biologists now often need to use complementary techniques in order to answer complex research questions. The West-Life VRE will pilot an infrastructure for storing and processing data in order to support the growing use of combined techniques. It will develop automated and integrated data management and processing pipelines for structural biology, enabling structural biologists to get the benefit of the generic services developed by EUDAT and the European Grid Initiative. In doing that, West-Life will expand the service protofolio of the previous WeNMR EU project coordinated by Utrecht in order to cover all aspects of structural biology, serving the INSTRUCT ESFRI community.
The West-Life consortium consists of 10 different European partners for a total budget of 4 million euros.
The second project called BioExcel falls under the Center of Excellence (CoE) for Computing Applications e-Infrastructure programme (EINFRA-5-2015). Life Science research has become increasingly digital, and this development is accelerating rapidly. Biomolecular modelling techniques such as homology modelling, docking, and molecular simulation have advanced tremendously, resulting in extreme demands for better computational performance and throughput as these tools are used in applied research and industrial development. Despite being one of the largest and fastest growing communities in need of high-end computing, Life Sciences has only rather recently started to use e-Infrastructure solutions. Making those useable by researchers who are not computing experts, improving the performance and applicability of key life science applications (including for Utrecht our HADDOCK software) and handling large amounts of data in computational workflows are challenges that the BioExcel CoE will be tackling.
The BioExcel consortium consists of 11 different European partners for a total budget of 4.8 million euros.