The European Marine Biological Resource Center becomes a European Research Innovation Centre

The European Center for Marine Biological Resources, EMBRC, has celebrated its adoption as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC).

The event took place at Sorbonne University, where the EMBRC headquarters are located, in the presence of representatives from the European Commission, the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research and government delegations from the nine founding countries (Belgium, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom).

As European countries that make up a large maritime coastline, the EMBRC-ERIC is a research platform in ecology and marine biology that brings together 24 European marine stations. It provides state-of-the-art facilities, technology platforms and advanced services to study marine organisms and ecosystems. It enables the development of new technologies and marine biological models to deepen life sciences discoveries, as well as long-term marine ecological monitoring efforts.

The EMBRC-ERIC is a driving force in the development of blue biotechnologies in maritime regions, supporting both basic and applied research activities for sustainable solutions in the food, health and environmental sectors.

The EMBRC-ERIC is therefore essential in meeting the major scientific and technological challenges:

• Understand the functioning of the marine ecosystem so that tomorrow’s oceans are healthy.
• Preserve the extent of global ocean marine biodiversity.
• Build on the potential of the marine environment to develop new biomaterials.
• Provide both traditional and new marine biological models to deepen fundamental discoveries in the life sciences.
• Develop technologies, standards and methods that support scientific breakthroughs.

As the first university to host a European infrastructure, Sorbonne University, in partnership with the CNRS, also manages the EMBRC-France, which brings together the three SU/CNRS marine stations in Roscoff, Villefranche and Banuyls on the coasts of continental France.

This release was first published 21 June by Sorbonne University.