The OpenScienceLink is a healthy mix of organizations that have a strong interest to participate in the development and validation of an ecosystem for creating, accessing, analyzing and using information from openly accessible repositories of scientific information. The main goal associated with the composition of the consortium was to ensure the participation of all stakeholders required for the integration of the OpenScienceLink platform and pilot services, as well as for the credible piloting, validation and evaluation of the services. In the following, the project partners are listed, along with a short description of their expertise and their role in the project.
Technische Universität Dresden (TUD)
Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) is the Project Coordinator and within the OpenScienceLink project acts as Technology Provider, OpenScienceLink Platform Integrator, and End User. TUD participates with three research groups: (1) the Bioinformatics group of TUD’s Biotechnology Center (BIOTEC), (2) the Pancreatic Laboratory, Department for the Visceral, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery of the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden (Uniklinikum), and, (3) the group of Bioresponsive Materials of the Center for Molecular Bioengineering (BCube). The BIOTEC is a unique interdisciplinary center hosting international research groups dedicated to genomics, proteomics, biophysics, cellular machines, tissue engineering and bioinformatics. Currently there are some 230 researchers in the BIOTEC from over 37 different countries. The academic groups are under one roof with over 20 biotechnology companies and some 200 members of staff. The bioinformatics group at TU Dresden works on protein interactions and functional annotation with text mining, ontologies, and reasoning. Together with Transinsight, the group has developed GoPubMed, the ontology-based literature search engine (http://www.gopubmed.org), which is widely used in the life sciences domains. The group also won the BioCreative text mining competition 2007, where 50 international teams participated. The pancreatic laboratory of Uniklinikum is investigating new diagnostic and therapeutic methods to improve the outcome of patients with ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas (PDAC) using modern methods of molecular biology like microarray analysis. The lab has also applied other high throughput methods to generate candidate genes in PDAC. The group of Bioresponsive Materials of BCube develops chemical methods for biological and medical research and applications. The group focuses in drug targeting and switching, drug discovery using chemical libraries with screening and selection and enzymology of cis/trans Isomerases.
More info about the Bioinformatics group can be found here, about the Pancreatic Laboratory here, and about the Bioresponsive Materials here.
National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)
The National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) is a technology provider in OpenScienceLink and participates through the Distributed, Knowledge and Media Systems Group (DKMS). NTUA is the oldest and most prestigious technical university in Greece. It was founded in 1837 and has since been contributing to the progress of the engineering science in Greece, through the education of young engineers and its multi-faceted research and development activities. The University comprises nine departments, each one covering a different aspect of the engineering field. The School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens is well known in Greece and abroad for the research achievements of its faculty members and the good reputation of its students and alumni. The field of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) spans a wide range of subject areas, like computer science, telecommunications, electronics, automatic control and electric power. The research activities of the DKMS group focus mainly on: (i) Knowledge, Media & Digital Art, dealing with topics such as Knowledge Representation and Domain Modelling, Semantic Reasoning, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems, Clustering and Pattern Identification, Computer Vision and Advanced Multimedia Applications, and, (ii) Advanced Distributed Computing, dealing with topics such as Service Oriented Architectures, Cloud Computing and Internet of Things. Work includes Distributed Computing, SOA systems, Data Aggregation, Policy-driven systems, QoS and Trust issues in Service Provisioning Systems, SLA Lifecycle Management (provisioning, negotiation, enforcement).
More info about the DKMS group can be found here.
Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (LUHS)
The Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (LUHS) is the largest specialized health education institution in Lithuania, where specialists in biomedical field are trained. In addition to its educational function, the LUHS is also the largest medical research centre in Lithuania. The hospital of the LUHS is a largest health care institution in the country. LUHS participates in OpenScienceLink through the Institute of Behavioral Medicine. LUHS will be involved as an end-user organization. In particular, it will involve users (i.e. researchers, students) that will use and evaluate the OpenScienceLink services and processes, as part of the pilot operations of the project. Based on the project’s platform, LUHS will have the opportunity to reinforce its expertise in the preparation and conduction of clinical trials in different fields of medicine, including psychiatry, neurology and neurosurgery, endocrinology, cardiology, obstetrics, oncology and primary care. LUHS will exploit the OpenScienceLink platfom and approach as a vehicle for open low-cost and effective access to large scale repositories of reseach information including papers/publications, data journals and clinical trials.
More info about the Institute of Behavioral Medicine can be found here.
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA)
The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) was founded on 1837. The University of Athens has developed into a modern tertiary educational institution, employing 2.200 teaching and research staff. It is the largest educational institution in Greece with approximately 12.000 postgraduate students enrolled in various programs. It contains 31 Faculties, 241 laboratories, 66 medical departments and houses six central libraries. The University of Athens has always been in the forefront of research and teaching and in terms of scientific output it ranks in the top 100 universities in Europe. In the OpenScienceLink project, NKUA participates through the Department of Pharmacology. The Department of Pharmacology is a division of the Faculty of Medicine, and has developed considerable research activity in the field of cardiovascular pharmacology during the last decade and has received international recognition with several publications in international scientific journals. The Department of Pharmacology will offer their extensive experience in pharmacology and basic research. Thus, they will actively participate in the requirements analysis, pilot operations, as well as the prototypes evaluation.
More info about the Department of Pharmacology can be found here.
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU LEUVEN)
The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven) is the largest Belgian academic institution and one of the oldest European universities. In 2008, the research expenditure of the University reached the level of 330 million euro and K.U.Leuven researchers published 4.047 publications in international peer-reviewed academic and scientific journals. K.U.Leuven is also a member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU), a group of twenty European research-intensive universities committed to the values of high-quality education in an internationally competitive research environment. More than 200 K.U.Leuven researchers are permanently working on information and communications technology related issues. They belong to different university departments with a strong tradition in multidisciplinary research on information and communications technology issues. In OpenScienceLink, K.U. Leuven participates through the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law & ICT (ICRI), and they are the legal experts of the consortium. ICRI is a research centre at the Faculty of Law of K.U.Leuven is dedicated to advance and promote legal knowledge about the information society through research and teaching of the highest quality. ICRI is also among the founding members of The LEUVEN Center on Information and Communication Technology (LICT) and IBBT. ICRI’s current staff counts 2 full time professors, 5 full time postdoctoral researchers, 19 fulltime doctoral and legal researchers, 3 administrative assistants and 10 affiliated researchers. Its research is focused on the design of innovative legal engineering techniques and is characterised by its intra- and interdisciplinary approach, constantly aspiring cross-fertilisation between legal, technical, economic and socio-cultural perspectives. By conducting groundbreaking legal research in a spirit of academic freedom and freedom of inquiry, ICRI aspires to a place among the centres of excellence in the area of law & ICT in Europe and beyond. ICRI has carried out several studies and consultancy assignments with a strong tradition in multidisciplinary research on information and communications technology issues. Within OpenScienceLink, ICRI will perform the legal analysis on open access and IPR issues and develop legal requirements for accessing and using scientific information in the 5 pilot scenarios.
More info about the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law & ICT can be found here.
National Research Council – Institute of Clinical Physiology (CNR)
Established in Pisa in 1968, the CNR Institute of Clinical Physiology (IFC-CNR) finds its driving force and key to success in the idea of having physicians and scientists from different streams to work together towards new solutions for patient care. The primary interest of IFC-CNR is in cardiovascular diseases in a multiorgan perspective comprising related pulmonary, metabolic, neuro-endocrine and renal mechanisms and disorders. Within the National Health Service, IFC-CNR- Gabriele Monasterio Tuscany Region Foundation operates 130 beds. IFC-CNR network includes two clinical sections with research facilities (Pisa and Massa), and additional clinical research units in Milan, Siena, Rome and Lecce. With an established record of collaboration with industry, technological research of IFC-CNR has been successful in the areas of artificial organs, bioengineering, medical electronics, signal and image processing, and in implementing an advanced ICT system integrating all clinical activities of IFC-CNR. The current state-of-the-art facility for clinical and large animal imaging will soon be completed by a new microimaging center, with a complete complement of instrumentation – ultrasound, MRI and PET – for the study of physiological events and pathological processes in animal models. Within the framework of OpenScienceLink, CNR will have the role of the end-user in the project and more specifically during the pilot operations, where it will involve 200 users in the validation of the platform. CNR will also participate in requirements, specifications, pilot preparations and evaluation activities.
More info about the CNR Institute of Clinical Physiology can be found here.
PROCON OOD (Procon)
Procon is a flexible knowledge-based company established in Bulgaria in 1995, adding value on the boundary between advanced science and technology developments and rapidly changing organizational requirements. It provides organizational and technological support to the process of requirements definition, customization, deployment and operation of technologies, in particular sensor, communications and information systems. Procon disseminates knowledge on advancing and applying communications and information technologies through publication, in print and electronically, of the peer-reviewed English language quarterly Information and Security: An International Journal (ISSN 0861-5160, previously 1311-1493; e-ISSN 1314-2119), books, brochures, reports and monographic studies. Jointly with partner organisations, Procon publishes other journals and book series, primarily on issues of security and defense policy, organizes courses, seminars, conferences and technology demonstrations in the areas of its specialization. In OpenScienceLink, Procon will represent the publishers world in the consortium. Its main tasks/role include: (i) Developing a concept for data journals, (ii) Modeling and analysis of the peer review processes, (iii) Recommendations for process improvement, benchmarking and assessment, and, (iv) Potentially launching one or more open-access data journal(s) as part of the project’s sustainability phase.
More info about Procon can be found here.
Transinsight GmbH (TI)
Transinsight GmbH (TI) is a German company, extremely active in the areas of semantic search engines and semantic enabled solutions, with specialisation in the domains of the life sciences. The company develops novel semantic algorithms, state-of-the art natural language processing techniques, and ontologies, in order to provide better and faster search capabilities for complex queries. Their flagship products, namely GoPubMed, Go3R, and GoDiseases renowned biomedical search engines, are the first knowledge-based search systems of the next generation publicly available on the internet. In acknowledgement of the technologies developed by the company, TI has repeatedly been honoured with international awards e.g., the reddot design award best of the best 2009, the German Industry Prize 2010, the Innovationspreis IT 2011 and the Detecon ICT Award 2012. The firm works in close collaboration with Technische Universität Dresden, with the headquarters residing within the premises of one of the largest biotechnology research centers in Germany, namely BIOTEC. Selected customers are: Unilever, BASF, BfR, Statoil, RWE, Abcam, EMBL, and the European Centre for Diseases Prevention and Control. Besides the industry activities and experience, TI conducts cutting edge research in the fields of bioinformatics and text mining. The research in TI covers the following topics: design and evolution of bio-ontologies, text mining to extract protein interactions and ontology terms in text, grid computing for bioinformatics, analysis of high-throughput micro-array and RNAi data, biomedical applications, and life cell imaging and motion tracking. In OpenScienceLink, TI is scientific data provider and data integrator into the OpenScienceLink platform, as well as intregrator of the GoPubMed additional services to be developed for the purposes of the pilot operations. In addition, TI will contribute to the overall exploitation plan and, more precisely, to the business exploitation of the OpenScienceLink platform services that are included in the pilot operations.
More info about Transinsight GmbH can be found here.