The ELIXIR Board convened at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, United Kingdom, on 15-16 April 2026, and Latvia and Poland became Observers

The 25th ELIXIR Board meeting took place at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, United Kingdom, on 15-16 April 2026, bringing together national representatives, Observers, and Heads of Nodes to shape the strategic direction of Europe’s life science data infrastructure. As ELIXIR’s principal governing body, the Board steers the organisation’s scientific programme, budget, and partnerships, while overseeing policy on data governance, ethics, and international collaboration. Each Member State and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) appoints a single delegate, with decisions reached by consensus or qualified majority.

This year’s spring meeting marks a significant development for Europe’s bioinformatics landscape: on 15 April, the ELIXIR Board approved the applications of both Latvia and Poland to join ELIXIR as Observers. This milestone signals both countries’ commitment to strengthening their integration into Europe’s leading life science data infrastructure and progressing towards full Membership.

Observer status enables countries to participate in Board discussions and ELIXIR initiatives without immediate full financial or operational commitments. It provides a structured pathway towards Membership and closer integration into the ELIXIR ecosystem, as previously demonstrated by Croatia and Austria.

The future ELIXIR Node in Latvia will be led by Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) and coordinated by Doctor of Natural Sciences, tenured professor at RSU Science Centre, Baiba Vilne, who will serve as Head of Node. The emerging ELIXIR Latvia node currently includes its coordinator - Rīga Stradiņš University - and founding partners -  the University of Latvia, the Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Centre, and Children’s Clinical University Hospital - with additional research and infrastructure partners expected to join in the near future. The Node will focus on AI-enabled multi-modal and omics data integration and analytics, FAIR and interoperable data and computational workflows, scalable and trusted compute infrastructures, and national bioinformatics capacity building across human health, environmental, and biodiversity research domains.

The emerging ELIXIR Poland node will be led by Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, bringing together universities and research centres from across the country. The Polish consortium will provide expertise in multi-omics research -including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metagenomics -complemented by strong competencies in structural and systems biology, as well as innovative approaches to biodiversity research.

As previously reported, on 1 June 2025, Rīga Stradiņš University launched the project RSU Participation in the Horizon Europe Programme (project No. 1.1.1.5/3/25/I/014), which includes the implementation of Latvia’s National Partnership and Action Plan under the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) and European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) framework, specifically supporting the country’s integration into ELIXIR. The approval of Observer status now marks an important next step in this process.