The national SciLifeLab starts today
NEWS, 1 July 2013] SciLifeLab has become a national centre with a new organisation as of today. The joint management from Stockholm and Uppsala is in place to lead the next phase of SciLifeLab and the first four national platforms have been approved.
Today Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) formally starts working as a national centre. Advanced instrumentation, know-how and training will be offered to Swedish researchers in large-scale molecular biosciences.
The national centre will be led by a strategic management team from the four host universities. Director (Mathias Uhlén), Co-Director (Kerstin Lindblad-Toh) and nine Scientific Directors, will be responsible for the overall strategic management of the technical platforms and the research within the centre. The two nodes in Stockholm and Uppsala are managed by the Site Managers Fredrik Sterky (Stockholm) and Maria Sörby (Uppsala).
The Scientific Directors are:
- Jan Andersson (KI, interim)
- Anna Wedell (KI, interim)
- Helene Andersson Svahn (KTH)
- Joakim Lundeberg (KTH)
- Gunnar von Heijne (SU)
- Mats Nilsson (SU)
- Ulf Landegren (UU)
- Karin Forsberg Nilsson (UU)
- Johan Elf (UU)
On June 18th, the SciLifeLab board decided on the four first national platforms.
The national platforms provide both advanced services, know-how and bioinformatics support for Swedish researchers. They are funded by a national investment to strengthen Swedish life science as well as other sources and are available at a fee-for-service cost to the Swedish academic community. The national board and steering committees will ensure national usage and strategic development of the platforms.
The currently approved national platforms are:
Genomics
The platform provides access to technology for massively parallel DNA sequencing, genotyping and associated bioinformatics support.
Bioinformatics
The platform provides infrastructure, tools and techniques to analyse and interpret data from high-throughput analyses and performs methods development.
Chemical Biology
The platform provides small molecule screening, hit optimization chemistry and pharmacokinetic profiling. The platform is part of the Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden (CBCS).
Structural Biology
The platform provides a protein production unit and access to instruments for biophysical characterization.
The approval of the four platforms has been preceded by an evaluation process performed by the National Reference Committee, which includes representatives from all of the large universities in Sweden. Additional platforms will be evaluated and decided upon later in the year.
SciLifeLab and the host universities want to support young researchers and further strengthen the research environment at SciLifeLab and are therefore now advertising eight career positions for research leaders, two at each of the universities, in the fields of microbial bioenergy production, applied physics, biomedical sciences, ecological genomics, RNA biology, molecular medicine and molecular biosciences. More information will soon be available at www.scilifelab.se.