General information

Full name                               
European Marine Biological Resource Centre           
Short nameEMBRC
Legal statusStep-one ERIC application submitted (March 2016)
Operational statusunder development
  
Coordinating institutionUniversité Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 6
Executive Director
Ilaria Nardello
  
RI member countries            
BE, ES, FR, GR, IL, IT, NO, PT, UK
Observer-
 
Website www.embrc.eu
Contactsecretariat [at] embrc.eu

National nodes

This sections provides an overview on the national subsidiaries of the RI.

 

NameContact, website
EMBRC-BE
Belgium

Contact: Tim Verstaeten, secretariat [at] embrc.eu

Website

  
EMBRC-FR
France

Contact: Natalie Turque, secretariat [at] embrc.eu

Website

  
EMBRC-GR
Greece

Contact: secretariat [at] embrc.eu

Website

  
EMBRC-IL
Israel

Contact: secretariat [at] embrc.eu

Website

  
EMBRC-IT
Italy

Contact: Marco Borra, secretariat [at] embrc.eu

Website

  
EMBRC-NO
Norway

Contact: secretariat [at] embrc.eu

Website

  
EMBRC-PT
Portugal

Contact: secretariat [at] embrc.eu

Website

  
EMBRC-SP
Spain

Contact: Antonio Villanueva, secretariat [at] embrc.eu

Website

  
EMBRC-UK
United Kingdom

Contact: Axel Miller, secretariat [at] embrc.eu

Website

 

 

Description of the organisation

The EMBRC-ERIC is a pan-European distributed research infrastructure that aims to provide a strategic delivery mechanism for excellent and large-scale marine biological and ecological research in Europe. With its services, EMBRC will support both fundamental and applied research based on marine bioresources and ecosystems.
In particular, EMBRC aims to drive forward the development of blue biotechnologies. 

Catering for users from academia, industry, policy and the technology sectors, EMBRC provides a unique entry point to access an integrated portfolio of services, bio-technology research platforms and marine organisms, as well as analytical and historical environmental data, to investigate the potential of the marine bioresources to deliver for societally relevant research domains:

  1. Human health and well-being: Marine organisms have historically proven to be fundamental models to understand human cell physiology. More recently, the untapped chemistry of marine natural products is providing the necessary novel bioactives and biomaterials to address the issues of antibiotic resistance, cancer therapy, tissue regeneration and drug delivery, among others. EMBRC is the first step of the health and well-being biodiscovery pipeline based on the sustainable use of marine bioresources.
  2. Sustainability of food production: With a soaring global demand for protein, and aquaculture recently surpassing beef farming production, marine biology and ecology are key disciplines to create sustainable harvesting/rearing programmes and policies. EMBRC provides state of the art facilities to test the impact of treatments, such as nutrition and/or health measures, as well as the effects of environmental conditions, on the productivity of reared biological resources.
  3. Industrial process innovation: Marine enzymes and proteins can support novel process development in the chemical industries; efficient and effective cultivation methods and technologies, as well as extraction techniques are also in high demand by the bio-refinery industry. EMBRC is key to specifically bioprospecting marine biota for white biotechnology applications.
  4. Environmental adaptations to climate and pollution: In depth knowledge of marine biology and ecology is essential to preserve the natural marine environment and its services. EMBRC can provide the indoor and outdoor scalable settings to experiment the impact of different environmental conditions on biota, as well as mitigation and remediation measures.  

Delegated services as well as private research are available at the EMBRC premises, satisfying both academic and industrial users. Excellence of research will be supported creating a virtuous mechanisms and a recognizable quality label, stimulating mutual development and building on reciprocal prestige. Coordinating a wide range of expertise in various research domains, EMBRC will be driven by a truly multidisciplinary community, setting the goals and achieving the objectives of the EU research and innovation agenda.

Service offer

A list of services offered by EMBRC can be downloaded here.