Project

PREP-IBISBA: creating conditions to launch EU-IBISBA

Mounting concerns about current global challenges compel policy makers and citizens to put science at the centre of socioeconomic development. In this context, scientists are called upon to devise strategies that can accelerate science in order to promote innovation and deliver significant results to address these issues.

One such strategy, which is gradually becoming adopted by Europe and the USA, is the development of research infrastructures. These are organizations that allow the scientific community to use specific facilities, resources and services, thereby enhancing collaboration between scientists from different countries, economic sectors, research fields and institutions. 

Background 

Research infrastructures are a promising solution to make science more accessible and efficient in the complex European backdrop of interactions among nations. They provide an enabling environment for the sharing of knowledge and resources and thereby contribute to the collection of data, facilities, and equipment, avoiding duplication of effort. 

By making high-quality facilities, resources, and services available to everyone, research infrastructures ensure that science is driven by excellence and not by research capacity of individual countries, economic sectors, or institutions. They also ensure that this excellence aims at solving bottlenecks, pushing forward the frontiers of scientific disciplines, and at enabling transformative technological development. 

In the aforementioned context, the European Industrial Biotechnology Innovation and Synthetic Biology Accelerator (EU-IBISBA) aims to become a leading European research infrastructure that provides translational Research & Development & Innovation services to an international community of industrial biotechnology stakeholders, including academia, SMEs, and industry. EU-IBISBA’s goals include to accelerate knowledge generation and early stage research results towards maturity and uptake for further development by industrial R&I. 

Project description 

The aim of this particular project under the name of PREP-IBISBA, is to create the conditions to launch EU-IBISBA. This will be done by delivering all the conceptual elements necessary to finalise the science and technology case and to define the business model, establishing a long range financial plan and identifying alternative legal frameworks suitable to deliver EU-IBISBA. Supported by strong managerial procedures, numerous stakeholder consultations, communication and dissemination work and specific actions aimed at delivering e-tools, this work will provide the basis for commitment by stakeholders, particularly Member States, but also industry investors (through a public-private partnership). Overall, the work will lead to the creation of a legal entity, preferentially either an European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) or another suitable legal instrument. 

Main goals

  • Develop and explore the EU-IBISBA business model and examine possible legal entity options.
  • Develop the EU-IBISBA financial plan and prepare the legal statutes of the legal entity.
  • Begin pre-implementation of EU-IBISBA as an operational research infrastructure.