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I am delighted that Italy has signed the MoU. It’s been a long trail to get to the point
where they have been able to sign, and it's been a lot of work, initially by all
the ELIXIR community, but most recently by the Italian bioinformatics
community, working with their government to bring them to the point to sign.
I hope that, and I’m most sure that, ELIXIR will grow very much because of the
need for this type of initiative.
And then, of course, Italy will be part of what I hope will be a success story
and we plan to use our abilities and resources of the country to contribute
with services, with computer time, with training, and especially with our young
researchers who are well known for being extremely good and motivated in
pursuing the objectives of science.
Italy will join the 11 other countries, and EMBL, who have already signed
the Memorandum of Understanding.
By joining, Italy becomes part of the Interim Board, and the Interim Board’s job is to
define the legal, governance and scientific vision for ELIXIR.
and so Italy will be part of that process. And that means that we will construct ELIXIR
in a way that suits Italy as well as the other members,
and so it’s very important that they are part of this shaping process.
The biotechnological companies in Italy are in third place in Europe and
it’s a growing sector of the market.
So their role will be to find innovative ways of working, and this will have an
impact not only on health, on agriculture, on the environment, but also on the
technological developments which will have to support the bioindustries.
So, I see this as a great opportunity for Europe first, but Italy as well,
to be able to put together all this data we are continuously receiving,
analysing, and storing, in order to transform this raw data into knowledge.
and this will also benefit the market at large - the bioindustries - not only in this country
but hopefully in the whole of Europe.