Sophia Antipolis, France – 1 February 2016– ERCIM is leading a new EC research investment of 4,37m€ (the VRE4EIC project) to enhance Virtual Research Environments (VRE) aimed at (4) Empowering multi-disciplinary research communities and accelerate Innovation and Collaboration (EIC). 

Together with ERCIM, 7 European organisations are joining forces: European research teams (CWI, TU Delft, CNR, FORTH) together with international organisations (EuroCRIS and W3C) and active e-Research infrastructures (ENVRIplus, represented by University of Amsterdam and EPOS, represented by INGV). Their objective is to build a VRE reference architecture and building blocks of an enhanced VRE (so-called e-VRE, the software outcome of the project).

According to Keith Jeffery (ERCIM), the scientific coordinator of VRE4EIC, “The project envisages eventually VREs interoperating among themselves using e-VRE while accessing e-Research Infrastructures (such as EPOS and 20 other environmental research infrastructures in ENVRIplus) which are themselves dependent on regional and national e-Infrastructures and European e-Infrastructures such as GEANT, EUDAT, EGI”.

VRE4EIC intends to change the life of 70.000 European researchers, by providing them supporting tools for collaborative, multi-disciplinary data-driven science, as needed to tackle critical societal challenges such as climate change and energy sustainability.

The specific objectives of the project are:

1.      Increase the VRE usability for multi-disciplinary research;

2.      Increase the quality of VRE user experiences;

3.      Increase the deployment of VRE on different research infrastructures by abstracting and reusing building blocks and workflows;

4.      Improve the contextual awareness and interoperability of metadata;

5.      Promote exploitation and standardisation of e-VRE.

VRE4EIC project software outcome will be available under an open source software license for maximum uptake and community building.

About VRE4EIC

VRE4EIC is a 3-year Horizon 2020 research & innovation action (EINFRA-9-2015) coordinated by ERCIM and carried out with partners from The Netherlands (CWI, TU Delft, EuroCRIS and UvA), Italy (CNR and INGV) and Greece (FORTH).  VRE4EIC stands for a Europe-wide interoperable Virtual Research Environment to Empower multidisciplinary research communities and accelerate Innovation and Collaboration. VRE4EIC has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 676247.

e-VRE designates the technology that will result from the VRE4EIC project.

More information: www.vre4eic.eu.

About ERCIM GEIE

ERCIM - the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics - aims to foster collaborative initiatives within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry. Leading European research institutes are members of ERCIM. ERCIM is based in Sophia Antipolis, France.

More information: www.ercim.eu.

Related hyperlinks

1.      CWI,                http://www.cwi.nl/

2.      CNR ISTI,        http://www.isti.cnr.it/

3.      FORTH,           http://www.forth.gr/

4.      TU DELFT,     http://www.tudelft.nl/

5.      EUROCRIS,      http://www.eurocris.org/

6.      INGV,              http://www.ingv.it/

7.      UVA,                https://www.uva.nl/

8.      EPOS,              http://www.epos-eu.org/

9.      ENVRIplus,     http://www.envriplus.eu/

Contacts: