SUCCESS STORIES

Implemented as a distributed infrastructure in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania, ELI will be the first infrastructure identified by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) to be located in new Member States. With an implementation budget of over €845 million largely co-financed by structural funds, the project represents an unprecedented example of how research infrastructures can bridge the objectives of scientific excellence, regional development and European cohesion.

IAGOS is setting up a network of commercial aircraft that will carry out observations of atmospheric composition on a scale that would be impossible to achieve using research aircraft.

INTERACT is a network of terrestrial research infrastructures spread through-out Arctic and northern alpine regions that is building research and monitoring capacity dedicated to rapidly changing cold environments. It plays a major role in documenting environmental changes and facilitating their prediction.

Instruct is a dynamic, integrated research infrastructure for structural biology. Initiated in 2008, it has evolved into a prominent platform where cutting-edge technology, leading expertise and pioneering training combine in support of outstanding science. Instruct champions an integrated approach to structural biology. It strives to refine the quality of structural biology research in Europe by contributing to and promoting new developments and methodologies. It also provides strategic leadership for structural biology policy in Europe.

SHARE provides open and free of charge access to data, and aims to help researchers understand the impact of population ageing on European societies and thus to help policy makers make decisions on health, social and economic policy. SHARE helps policymakers to understand for example: the implications of ageing for public finances, the labour market, income distribution and family life. The analysis of SHARE data will help European countries to more effectively prepare for the continuing challenges to their welfare systems in an ageing society.

The large European Spallation Source (ESS) research infrastructure (RI) will be a world first in the field of neutron production for analytical purposes. Rated at 5 MW, it will be the world's most powerful long-pulse source of low-energy neutrons, which are particularly useful in the analysis and understanding of condensed matter (soft and hard), magnetism, biology and nuclear physics. ESS's intense neutron beams will allow for unprecedented research on real time, real size, in situ, in vivo measurements on organic and inorganic materials, including movies of nano-scale events.

The goal of SIOS is to establish an observational research infrastructure for the Arctic Earth System integrating studies of geophysical, chemical and biological processes from the research and monitoring platforms. The EU is funding the Preparatory Phase of this new infrastructure which is part of the ESFRI roadmap. The greatest achievement so far is the comprehensive participation in the initiative. By today, not only all countries with research stations and regular activities in Svalbard are involved as full or associated partners, but also all Arctic countries. Since the start of the project in 2010, two more international institutions have applied for and have been accepted as associated partners. SIOS will start operation in 2013.

In order to reduce development time for new effective drugs, and thus improve the quality of life and reduce the social costs of disease, it is necessary to identify markers of disease or biological parameters that allow accurate and early diagnosis of the disease and its progression. According to the latest estimates of EU, the cost of brain diseases in Europe in 2004 was €386 billion and the global prevalence of Alzheimer's disease is predicted to quadruple to 106 million by 2050. The neuGRID e-Infrastructure can process the world's largest Alzheimer's disease imaging database in ten days, instead of five years. That equates to approximately 6 500 brain MRI scans consisting of over 1.6 million images related to more than 700 patients with Alzheimer's disease and Mild Cognitive impairment. This is tremendously effective because the analysis that can be done today in neuGRID would require more than five years to be run on a single computer.

Open Access is about unlocking the full value of science and research to all, without boundaries. Starting from publications and moving on to data, Open Access is on the forefront of the European Commission, spearheading the effort towards the Digital Agenda. Open Access is global – but implementation is local, and consequently European diversity requires extensive knowledge of national research practices, languages, administrative procedures and technical infrastructures. In less than a year, OpenAIRE has brought together a broad mixture of people from 27 European countries and is operating the digital infrastructure for Open Access to pass on the European FP7 Open Access policies to every researcher.