National Centre for Biotechnology of the Spanish National Research Council
Spanish National Research Council -CSIC
National Centre for Biotechnology - CNB
Spain
Jose Maria Carazo
Team Members: Carlos Oscar Sanchez, Marta Martinez
Jose Maria Carazo group focuses on the development of new image processing methods for Electron Microscopy, having pioneered some of the most widely used approaches in the Cryo-EM field.
Biocomputing Unit
Instruct Image Processing Center - I2PC
The CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) is Spain’s largest public research institution and ranks third among Europe’s largest research organization. The CSIC main objective is to develop and promote research that will help bring about scientific and technological progress, and it is prepared to collaborate with Spanish and foreign entities in order to achieve this aim. CSIC is a major player in the development of the European research area and therefore a significant contributor to the European integration process.
The CNB is CSIC’s largest research centre in economic terms. Over the past four years, the centre obtained on an average a total annual income of 26.6 M€. The 53% of the centre’s income come from external funding sources. About one third (32%) of the centre’s competitive funding was obtained from international funding bodies, mainly the European Commission, which included 8 European Research Council (ERC) grants. Among other international entities, the NIH, the Human Frontier Science Program and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded research at the CNB. The qualities of the centre’s scientific-technical services and their contribution to frontier research projects have situated the CNB on the frontline of pan-European research infrastructures (ESFRI). Within EMMA/Infrafrontier, the CNB is the Spanish node for the generation, phenotyping, archiving and distribution of genetically modified mouse models. The CNB-based INSTRUCT Image Processing Centre (I2PC) plays a key role in INSTRUCT-ERIC as the European reference centre for image processing in structural biology. CNB profile perfectly matches the tasks in this proposal, it hosts the “INSTRUCT Image Processing Centre”, devoted to developing new methods in Cryo-EM image processing which are then offered as new platforms to the whole of INSTRUCT-ERIC and one of the world leaders in the development of new algorithms and integrative software for Electron Microscopy. In terms of industrial relationships, CNB has a research contract with Thermo Fisher Scientific covering joint software development and dissemination activities, like the workshop series.