The ELIXIR Heads of Nodes Committee gathered in Prague on 12–13 May 2026 to present their emerging ELIXIR node.

Latvia Steps onto the European Stage: The ELIXIR Heads of Nodes Committee convened in Prague on 12–13 May 2026, where Latvia presented its future Node following Observer status approval

The ELIXIR Heads of Nodes Committee convened in Prague, Czech Republic, on 12–13 May 2026, bringing together the leaders of Europe’s national bioinformatics infrastructures at a pivotal moment for Latvia’s integration into the continent’s life science data ecosystem.

ELIXIR, one of Europe’s major distributed research infrastructures for life science data, coordinates domain data resources, software tools, compute infrastructure, training, and expertise across Europe. Operating through a distributed model, each participating country contributes a national “Node” — a network of institutions providing data, services, expertise, training and infrastructure. Each Node is led by a Head of Node, responsible for aligning national activities with ELIXIR’s strategy and representing their country within the broader governance framework. The Heads of Nodes Committee meets regularly throughout the year, with its main annual retreat traditionally held each May in Prague, serving as a key forum for coordinating these efforts, shaping the implementation of the ELIXIR Scientific Programme, and strengthening collaboration across countries.

This year’s meeting carried particular significance for Latvia. As previously reported, Latvia was approved as an ELIXIR Observer on 15 April 2026 during the 25th ELIXIR Board meeting at the Wellcome Genome Campus in the United Kingdom, marking an important step towards full membership and deeper integration into Europe’s bioinformatics infrastructure.

Latvia joined several other emerging and prospective ELIXIR member countries — including Slovakia, Croatia, Malta, Poland, and Romania — in a dedicated session introducing national bioinformatics activities and future Node plans. Latvia was invited to deliver a presentation providing an overview of the future Latvian ELIXIR Node, outlining its key areas of activity, infrastructure capacities, and planned contributions to the broader ELIXIR landscape.

At the Prague meeting, Professor Baiba Vilne of Rīga Stradiņš University — expected to serve as Head of the future Latvian ELIXIR Node — presented a comprehensive overview of Latvia’s bioinformatics landscape. The emerging Node, coordinated by Rīga Stradiņš University, currently involves three other founding partners — the University of Latvia, the Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Centre (LBRSC), and Children’s Clinical University Hospital (CCUH), which have already signed the Latvian National Memorandum of Understanding on Participation in the ELIXIR Consortium. Several additional partners are expected to join in the near future to establish a consortium of leading Latvian research institutions spanning four strategic domains: Health Data and Omics; AI/ML, Modelling and Drug Discovery; One Health and Environment; and Compute and Methods.

The broader Prague meeting agenda focused extensively on ELIXIR’s future strategic direction, including the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the European Health Data Space (EHDS), federated genomics infrastructures, artificial intelligence (AI) strategies, and future Horizon Europe priorities — areas closely aligned with Latvia’s planned contributions and long-term ambitions within ELIXIR.

As previously reported, on 1 June 2025, Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) 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 recent approval of Observer status now marks an important next step in this process.