Swiss Science Briefing on Research Infrastructures shows the pivotal role of RIs in fostering European competitiveness, for which international collaboration will be critical.
The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the Swiss Mission of Switzerland to the EU, the Swiss National Science Foundation and SwissCore jointly organised a Science Briefing on ‘The contribution of research infrastructures to European competitiveness’. The event emphasised the importance of Research Infrastructures (RIs) in maintaining Europe’s global competitiveness. Key discussions included upcoming European Research and Innovation policies, the design and preparations for FP10, the recently published Letta, Draghi and Heitor reports, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into research, and Swiss-EU collaborations.
The Science Briefing featured keynotes, presentations, and panel discussions involving leading Swiss and European research institutions: The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), representing the ETH Domain in Switzerland, hosting cutting-edge research facilities with 2’500 PSI and affiliated staff. The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Europe’s only intergovernmental laboratory for life sciences research, contributes significantly to Nobel Prize winning research, employs 2’000 people across six sites in Europe and includes 29 member states. The Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), a biological and biomedical data science hub, federating 900 scientists. SIB is also a main contributor to the largest EMBL hosted database (the SwissProt contribution to the UniProt database).
Additionally, the event provided an opportunity to learn more about Swiss-EU collaboration in the domain of RIs, highlighting the 50 years of scientific collaboration between Switzerland and EMBL, of which Switzerland has been a founding member since its establishment in 1974. Other European initiatives were highlighted, such as the engagement of PSI in LEAPS, SIB in Elixir, and EMBL in the EIROForum.
Alexander Renggli, Deputy Head of Mission, set the scene with his welcome speech, shedding light on the importance of RIs as a foundation for cutting-edge research, producing valuable data and jobs. He emphasised Switzerland’s financial commitments to RIs and its role in hosting world-class facilities like CERN or the Swiss synchrotron light-source and Swiss-Free-Electron Laser at PSI. Moreover, he mentioned progress in negotiations between Switzerland and the European Union to strengthen ties in research and innovation.
The first session of the event was moderated by Alexander Hasgall, Head of International Funding Policy at the Swiss National Science Foundation, and was composed of 4 input presentations:
PSI’s Head of communication, Mirjam Van Daalen, provided an overview of the PSI, its large-scale facilities and technology platforms for a broad range of research and development in science and medicine. She stressed the partnerships with industry (e.g., Park Innovaare) and educational collaborations with ETH Zurich and EPFL as the main drivers for competitiveness. In addition, Adrian Wanner, Group Leader at the Center for Life Sciences at PSI, focused on computational challenges in imaging and big data and the need for a Supra-National Center for Zettabyte-Scale Data Curation. He highlighted his public-private collaboration with Google, which delivers the computing power, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), providing the funding, but also referred to relevant European initiatives such as the ESFRI Human Brains/EBrains project, the European Supercomputing initiative EuroHPC, and plans for European X-Ray Connectomics Alliance.
For EMBL, Plamena Markova, Chief of International Relations, provided an overview of EMBL’s contributions to bottom-up research addressing global societal challenges such as climate change and Antimicrobial Resistance. She also highlighted EMBL’s track record in training the next generation of scientific leaders and the economic impact of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), one of EMBL’s sites, recently estimated at £11 billion annually thanks to more efficient research. EMBL’s input was completed by Sameer Velankar, team leader and senior scientist at EMBL-EBI. He focused on AI’s transformative role, exemplified by the recent awarded Nobel Prize of AlphaFold, developed by Google Deep Mind.
The panel discussion moderated by Simon Pickard, Science Business Network Director, included Mirjam van Daalen of PSI; Anne-Charlotte Fauvel, EU Relations Lead of EMBL; Christophe Dessimoz, Executive Director of the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics; and Iason Dougenis, Policy Officer for Research Infrastructures of DG RTD at the European Commission. Key topics discussed were: i. collaboration vs. competition and how to balance open science with strategic control of data and resources; ii. AI and data curation, stressing investments in curated data and training to fuel AI ecosystem; and iii. the economic impact of RIs, noting the multiplier effect of investments in research infrastructures.
Daalen (PSI) highlighted the financial returns on RI investments and emphasised that RIs are more than service providers and that they can build innovation. Fauvel (EMBL) highlighted the active role RIs have been playing in nurturing training of future talents, industry collaborations, and technology transfer. She also mentioned that RIs are key to providing access to good scalable data, which is an essential component of AI. Dessimoz (SIB) said that European RIs are globally the main provider of high-quality data. He advocated for improved networking between RIs and private industry, the importance of training and testing AI services, and showcased the challenge of innovation being absorbed in the US instead of Europe. Dougenis (European Commission) outlined the Commission’s ecosystem approach in its upcoming strategy on Research and Technology Infrastructures. He also discussed the link between basic research and market innovation, providing the European Research Council (ERC) as an example, in which many projects end up with patents and are connected in the market and competitiveness.
In the closing remarks, Dominik Sobczak, Deputy Head of Industrial Research, Innovation and Investment Agendas at DG RTD of the European Commission, highlighted the role of RIs in strategic autonomy and technological sovereignty. He also referred to the latest reports of Draghi, Letta and Heitor as an opportunity since science was highlighted as a key driver for the goals of sovereignty and competitiveness, and thus, linked investments are seen as an opportunity. However, he insisted that the EU needs to address the knowledge valorisation and innovation gap, insisting that fewer companies are leaders in tech/science innovation in Europe, a fact that is also highlighted in the 2024 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard.
He also referred to planned investments in AI, for instance, the need to integrate AI capacities with the use of training, the establishment of new Research Infrastructure to develop AI, the foreseen establishment of AI factories, the EU AI Council to pool resources on EU level to invest in AI in science and the guidelines for AI (see SwissCore article). He also referred to the fact that some American companies, such as Google, are starting to buy nuclear power plants as AI needs a lot of energy, a fact that is closely linked with the biggest questions of the European Clean Industrial Deal of the Re-elected European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
Finally, he provided an outlook and some recommendations: First, the EC has the mandate to establish a policy integrating RIs and Technology Infrastructures (Tis). In this context, an Expert Group on Tech Infrastructures was created in February 2024, which published a policy landscape report supporting TIs and plans to have an EU strategy for RIs and TIs in place at the latest in July 2025. Moreover, he referred to the work done in the framework of the current ERA agenda: While ERA Action 12 aims to create stronger links between research & innovation and industrial policies, ERA Action 8 analyses funding needs, access and regulations. Second, funding mechanisms to support long-term objectives should be ensured for the next European policy agenda and the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). More investments for the whole ecosystem should be foreseen. Third, the importance of reaching 3% of national investments for R&D was indicated, aligned with the level of investments of other world science powerhouses, such as the US, China, Japan, and Korea. Fourth, there is also an appetite for regulations; for instance, in the mission letters, the European Research Area Act, the European Innovation Act, and the EU Biotech Act are mentioned, which will also be relevant for RIs and TIs. Moreover, he referred to the recently updated European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures and a planned revision of the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). The New European Commission will develop some strategies that would benefit from inputs from RIs and Tis, such as the foreseen start-up and scale-up strategy, a life sciences strategy and a bioeconomy strategy. Fifth, the establishment of AI ecosystems with computing infrastructures and curated data repositories to reduce dependencies on global competitors. Sixth, public-private synergies to strengthen industry ties to maximise the impact of RIs on innovation. Seventh, data sovereignty to find the right balance between sharing with strategic control to maintain European competitiveness, and eighth, to provide advocacy for RI, showing the societal and economic value of RIs to stakeholders and policymakers.
Concluding, the Science Briefing highlighted the fundamental role of RIs in fostering European competitiveness. Strategic investments in AI, data management and curation, as well as international collaboration, will be critical to maintaining Europe’s leadership in global research and innovation.