The latest research directions in life sciences and technology rely increasingly on support by research infrastructures (RI) with specific equipment and highly-skilled experts, and this trend in increasing and inevitable. The project contributes to the joint challenge of the cross-border region through strengthening the existing institutional capacities and development new synergies.
As a targeted support of RIs on the regional level is still missing, the specific focus of the project will be on exploiting the potential of synergistic collaborations of the cross-border research infrastructures (RI) in the respective fields. The results of these collaborations will boost performance of the cross-border region RIs in terms of quality and range of provided services, development of new devices, which will be pro-actively promoted by the RIs towards innovative academic and industrial users. In this way, the project will coherently contribute to development of the regional research and bio- and nanotech sector through innovation of RI, which is the main goal of the project.
Two most prominent centers operating biomedical and technology RI in the AT – CZ cross-border region are Vienna Biocenter Core Facilities, GmbH in Vienna (VBCF) and Central European Institute of Technology in Brno (CEITEC). We have analysed instrumentation and expertises of the matching RIs and identified major obstacles and opportunities specific for this cross-border region RIs that needs to be tackled and exploited, respectively, to boost the quality of research and services performed. These systematic efforts lead to definition of the following main goals to be reached:
These results will be reached through 1) Training and staff exchanges among project partners, 2) innovative joint pilot projects base on the complementary cross-border equipment and expertise, and 3) workshops and “Open Access” in order to raise awareness of the offered services. These activities cannot be implemented without the cross-border cooperation as they depend on infrastructure and expertise on both sides of the border which cannot be easily replicated. This cooperation represents an outstanding opportunity for the cross-border region.
Total project costs: 1 494 784 EUR
Funded by: EU
Funding program: Interreg V-A Austria – Czech Republic
