Celebrating10 years of EC-US collaboration in biotechnology research
A two-day meeting celebrating 10 years of collaboration between the European Commission and US agencies in the field of biotechnology research will be concluded today in Brussels. The aim of the EC-US task force has been to anticipate the needs of the science of tomorrow, and exchange ideas among programme managers and administrators on the future directions of biotechnology research. the collaboration has played a key role in identifying new potentials and breakthroughs in biotechnology research since 1990. Both Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin and Dr. Mary Clutter, Assistant Director of the US national Science Foundation and US co-chair of the EC-US task force have highlighted the value of this co-operation. 'There is an increasing realisation of the need to collaborate globally' said Dr. Clutter. Dr Bruno Hansen, director of the 'Life sciences co-ordination' Directorate and co-chairman of the EC-US task force emphasised the importance of the collaboration for Europe: 'The task force has brought together leading scientists from both sides of the Atlantic to discuss future directions for research, giving Europe the possibility to contribute as an equal partner in determining how front line scientific research will happen'. Joint workshops have contributed significantly to the strengthening of co-operation in many emerging fields, such as bioinformatics, genomics, nanobiotechnology, neonatal immunity, biosafelty and biodiversity. Products of the collaboration will be presented at the meeting. These include an announcement by the neuroscience working group of the first EC-US database meeting, which has the goal of setting guidelines and standards for interoperative databases. This should facilitate many international collaborative research projects in neuroinformatics, and will allow key questions to be tackled. The farm animal genomes working group are to exchange results from projects funded by the European Commission Framework Programmes and the US department of agriculture. This is an important collaboration as farm animal genomic studies are expected to lead to better understanding of human diseases and the improvement of live-stock breeding programmes. The nanobiotechnology workshop is to present new biological sensing devices and miniaturised methods for rapid sequencing of DNA.