Scientific Advisory Board (SAB)

The Scientific Advisory Board plays a major role in the process for reviewing the Belgian Node and provides strategic scientific advice to the ELIXIR Belgium Steering Group. The SAB is an independent body, made up of leading experts from around the world. The ELIXIR Belgium SAB meets once a year.

SAB members

Ivo Gut, University of Barcelona, Spain
Celia Miguel, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Pinar Alper, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Inge Jonassen, University of Bergen, Norway
Ruben Kok, Dutch Techcentre for Life Sciences, the Netherlands
Juan-Antonio Vizcaino, EMBL

Steering group

The coordination of ELIXIR Belgium is entrusted to VIB. The steering group of ELIXIR Belgium consists of Yves Van de Peer (Head of Node), Frederik Coppens (deputy Head of Node and Technical Coordinator), Lieven Sterck (deputy Technical Coordinator), Alexander Botzki (Training Coordinator) and Kim De Ruyck (Node Coordinator).

Yves Van de Peer is Head of Node for ELIXIR Belgium. Frederik Coppens acts as deputy Head of Node and takes on the daily operations of the Belgian Node, together with the coordinator, Kim De Ruyck. Frederik is the main contact person for the ELIXIR Hub while Kim fulfils that role for the Belgian partners. Alexander Botzki is the training Coordinator for ELIXIR Belgium and is as such responsible for the ELIXIR Belgium training portfolio.

Partners

All Flemish universities and two Walloon universities are partner in the ELIXIR Belgium consortium, as well as VIB, the Flemish strategic research centre on biotechnology. As of December 2018, Sciensano is also partner of ELIXIR Belgium. These partners cover the major providers of bioinformatics infrastructure in Belgium. An overview of the representatives, and their activities and focus, of each institute is given below.

Collaborators

Many collaborators work behind the scenes to reach our objectives. These include software developers, postdoctoral scientists, researchers and a dedicated data science cloud coordinator and data science trainer located throughout Belgium. Here we list our collaborators and their specific activities in the framework of ELIXIR Belgium.

Stakeholders

Belgian research institutes active in life-sciences are also important stakeholders in the activities of ELIXIR Belgium. Members of these organisations generate and use data, and are ideally placed to provide input and feedback. We are actively pursuing engagement with these research institutes by organising a specific Interest Group meeting and active collaborations.

Industry

Industry usage of many key bioinformatics resources is high. Users of ELIXIR services range from large multinationals to micro-SMEs and cover fields including pharma, biotech, food, agriculture, and blue biotech.