Machine learning (ML) has enabled and accelerated frontier research in the life sciences, but democratised access to such methods is, unfortunately, not a given. Access to necessary hardware and software, knowledge and training, is limited, while methods are typically insufficiently documented and hard to find. Furthermore, even though modern AI-based methods typically generalize well to unseen data, no standard exists to enable sharing and fine-tuning of pretrained models between different analysis tools. Existing user-facing platforms operate entirely independently from each other, often failing to comply with FAIR data and Open Science standards. The field of AI and ML is developing at a staggering pace, making it impossible for the non-specialist to stay up to date. To enable the life science communities to benefit from AI/ML-powered image analysis methods, AI4LIFE will build bridges, providing urgently needed services on the common European research infrastructures. We will build an open, accessible, community-driven repository of FAIR pre-trained AI models and develop services to deliver these models to life scientists, including those without substantial computational expertise. Our direct support and ample training activities will prepare life scientists for responsible use of AI methods, while contributor services and open standards will drive community contributions of new models and interoperability between analysis tools. Open calls and public challenges will provide state-of-the-art solutions to yet unsolved image analysis problems in the life sciences. Our consortium brings together AI/ML researchers, developers of popular open source image analysis tools, providers of European-scale storage and compute services and European life sciences Research Infrastructures -- all united behind the common goal to enable life scientists to fully benefit from the untapped but potentially tremendous power of AI-based analysis methods.

European and global research infrastructures (RIs) provide facilities and resources to support excellence and innovation, delivering socio-economic value by raising skills, advancing knowledge and technology and its exploitation, and driving new development and construction. RIs closely engage with their specialist communities but RI sustainability in the long term requires engagement with civil communities and stakeholders where an understanding of the significance and the socio-economic benefits of the services delivered underpins financial and strategic support. RI-VIS will increase the visibility of European RIs to broader scientific communities, industry and strategic partners in third countries. The RI-VIS consortium has main membership from the life sciences RIs where there is urgent need to improve outreach and strategic partnerships. Partner RIs in other thematic groups ensure that outcomes are relevant to all. A major advantage of this consortium is first hand knowledge of RI services and operating processes and their user communities. RI-VIS will target communities and stakeholders with current and precise information and match them with RIs to facilitate i) the development of new collaborations, ii) user accessibility, iii) collaborative and innovative actions, iv) funding opportunities, v) knowledge transfer and vi) training opportunities. RI-VIS will make it easier for new entrants to find out how RIs are organized and funded, where and how to access RI services and where data is available. The communication framework will include several digital platforms to achieve broad reach and generate a communication toolkit to help others benefit from the experiences gained. RI-VIS will broker engagement of RIs with various stakeholder groups using events and thematic workshops. A collaboration toolkit will identify best engagement strategies to bring new agreements to fruition. RI-VIS will mentor a selection of partnerships to broker cooperation agreements.

The IMAGINE project will develop the next generation of scale-crossing imaging technologies to enable an integrated investigation of structure and function of biological systems. It will focus on developing and integrating four major disruptive microscopy technologies, namely: X-ray imaging, cryo electron microscopy, cryo and dynamic super-resolution microscopy and large volume intravital light microscopy. It will furthermore develop the AI-powered image analysis and data integration/sharing capabilities, that are needed to correlate these technologies and make their data widely available. To harness their power for some of the most pressing societal challenges, IMAGINE will prepare its new imaging technologies to be deployed in the field, on Europe’s seas and coastlines, so that the collection of environmental specimen in their natural context can be coupled with their study by highest resolution imaging technologies. The IMAGINE technologies are currently at the cutting edge of physics and engineering and therefore only available in isolation and to specialists. The project aims to bring them to the European life science user community at large by developing and validating them for service readiness, so that they can be provided as future services by Europe’s Research Infrastructures (RIs). To this end, the project will train RI staff on the operation and use of the IMAGINE technologies. To promote broad dissemination as commercial instruments, IMAGINE will develop technologies jointly between academia and industry promoting open innovation with key instrumentation manufacturers in the imaging field. The life science community increasingly relies on RIs to access ever more complex and rapidly developing scientific instruments. The scale-crossing imaging technologies developed by IMAGINE will be critical to empower ground-breaking research in Europe, that is so urgently needed to address some of the biggest challenges our societies will face in the future.

canSERVs mission is to make cutting-edge and customised research services available to the cancer research community EU wide, enable innovative R&D projects and foster precision medicine for patients benefit across Europe. By connecting, coordinating, and aligning existing oncology and complimentary research infrastructures (RIs) and providing services in a synergistic way transnationally, canSERV will capitalise on the critical mass of experts and cutting-edge services offered by canSERVs RIs and their extended network. canSERV brings together world-class European life science RIs (BBMRI, EURO-BIOIMAGING, ELIXIR, EU-IBISBA, EuroPDX, EU-OPENSCREEN, INSTRUCT, EATRIS, INFRAFRONTIER, EMBRC, ECRIN, EATRIS, MIRRI, ARIE, CCE, EORTC and IARC) that collectively not only covers all aspects along the development pipeline for oncology, but is also capable of interconnecting these technologies providing users a guidance for navigating them through the entire translational value chain. A patient organisation or resp. governance board members wil bring the patients perspective, while the two SMEs, ARTTIC and ttopstart, will provide valuable input regarding stakeholder engagement, and project management activities. A common access management system (CAMS) will be developed based on mature solutions from INSTRUCT and BBMRI. The CAMS will provide a method for selection of services, construction and submission of research proposals, multi-step review of research proposals, and tracking of the access process from approval through delivery to conclusion. Through a united user-intuitive transnational access where a united catalogue of oncology services will be offered, our users will have access to a comprehensive service portfolio. As our ambition is to scale up canSERV to a pan-European collaboration of RIs for accelerating the development and implementation of solutions for the cancer patient community, the sustainability of this network beyond the end of the project will also be addressed.

The EU Mission to restore our Oceans and Waters by 2030 relies on robust, reliable and ideally real-time biodiversity data. The analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) extracted from water or sediment, represents a major source of innovation in aquatic ecosystem monitoring with great potential to support the EU Mission. The central limitation for the routine implementation of eDNA-based methods are incomplete, disconnected and non-standardized reference libraries for taxonomic assignment as well as a lack of harmonised metadata. To support the coordination of the EU Mission Ocean strategy, eDNAqua-Plan will 1) collect information on existing projects, initiatives and infrastructures for aquatic monitoring in the EU and associated countries, 2) provide an overview of all national and international activities of standardization and interoperationalisation of methods and data workflows and 3) assess the relevance and feasibility of the creation of a digital ecosystem of eDNA repositories and an integrated and dynamic reference library of marine and freshwater species that is open-access and based on FAIR principles to support future aquatic biodiversity monitoring programmes and mapping initiatives. The interdisciplinary eDNAqua-Plan consortium comprises 18 partner institutions from 11 countries, and one international (UN) institute, with complementary expertise in marine and freshwater monitoring, eDNA analysis as well as data science. The consortium cooperates with the large EU research projects and infrastructure such as EMODnet, BIOSCAN-Europe, the Ocean and Water knowledge system, LifeWatch, and international systems (ELIXIR/EBI and OBIS) etc. to maximise synergies and interoperability internationally. Possible implementation will be demonstrated by use cases from national and transnational water monitoring programs. Based on this, eDNAqua-Plan will deliver a roadmap for harmonized aquatic monitoring using eDNA tools in Europe and beyond.