Call | Laboratory of “Molecular

Call for case study proposals at the distributed Lab. of Molecular Biodiversity

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 25/01/2019

LifeWatch Italy (hereafter LW-ITA), national node of LifeWatch ERIC, is designed in order to manage data on taxonomy, functional traits and properties, interactions and ecological niche of individuals, populations and species, abiotic data and other types of observation data. The e-infrastructure provides tools and services for data archiving, access, quality control, harmonization, integration and analysis.Thanks to the funding received from the project Bio4IU – multidisciplinary infrastructure for study and enhancement of marine and terrestrial Biodiversity in the perspective of the “Innovation Union” – (PONa3_0025), the MoBiLab (Molecular Biodiversity Lab) has been established and recently enhanced in the framework of the distributed Laboratory of  “Molecular Biodiversity” of LW-ITA under the coordination of the Institute of Biomembranes, Bioenergetics and Molecular Biotecnologies (IBIOM -CNR) and the University of Bari.  It integrates skills and advanced facilities to provide the scientific community with services and counselling for the molecular analysis of biodiversity. Innovative lab instruments and protocols for nucleic acids deep sequencing are associated with powerful ICT components for the management and analysis of produced data. In particular, this infrastructure, now well established and full capacity operating, holds Illumina MiSeq, Illumina NextSeq500 and Nanopore MinION systems interfaced with bioinformatics analysis tools suitably supported by powerful computing platforms hosted at the ReCaS data center, provided by the University of Bari and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN).

In order to promote the research in the field of Molecular Biodiversity and the multidisciplinary integration of the Italian groups interested in biodiversity studies and of their research applications, LW-ITA invites the interested researchers to submit projects proposals involving the production of molecular data through “Next Generation sequencing” technologies (e.g. sequencing of amplicons, genomes, metagenomes, transcriptomes and meta-transcriptomes) and their bioinformatic analysis.

The call is financed on the CNR FOE 2014-2016 funding, up to an overall maximum of 100.000€.

WHAT does LW-ITA call offer?

For all the proposals positively evaluated, LW-ITA will provide:

  • Free access to the infrastructure facilities and the relevant supporting manpower;
  • Funding up to a maximum of € 20,000 per proposal. It is provided to cover the cost of the required materials and the development of customized lab and bioinformatic protocols to address the specific project questions. All developments will be realised by LW-ITA up to cover the whole budget planned for the proposal;
  • Technical training for use of the infrastructure and its components and scientific support.

WHO can apply?

In order to apply for access to LW-ITA Call a user group (user teams or single users), must satisfy the following mandatory requirements:

  • The user group leader and the majority of the users must work/study in a recognized academic institution, or be employed by a not-for-profit organization or registered company;
  • User groups must accept the LW-ITA data policy and give open access to the data resources and the e-services developed, at least after an embargo period required for the publication of the project results;
  • User groups must cite LW-ITA and make suitable acknowledgement in their publications.

Priority will be given to:

  • Project proposals applied by consortia of early career researchers;
  • Project proposals involving interdisciplinary studies;
  • Project proposals which involve research groups belonging to different national nodes of LifeWatch ERIC;
  • Project proposals involving international research groups.

HOW to apply?

In order to apply, you should download and complete the LifeWatch Italy proposal form. Signed submission forms should be sent in PDF to lifewatchitalia[at]unisalento.it by 21 December 2018. 

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 25/01/2019.

 

Proposals evaluation and selection

Project proposals will be evaluated as follows:

1. Eligibility check 

LW-ITA verifies received project proposals for compliance with the mandatory requirements.

2. Scientific review 

Eligible project proposals are forwarded to the Evaluation Panel for peer-review, based on scientific and technical merit and on societal impact. The Evaluation Panel is composed of international members with strong expertise in the field of biodiversity and information technology.

The evaluation and selection process will take about 8 weeks. Outcomes of the evaluation will be relayed to user groups via email.

IMPORTANT DATES

  • Opening of the call: October 22nd, 2018
  • Submission deadline: December 21st, 2018. DEADLINE EXTENDED TO January 25th, 2019
  • Evaluation and Selection deadline: March 28th, 2019
  • Duration of study case: up to 8 months
  • Preliminary presentation of results: December 2019
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