Biotechnology, food and nutrition, material testing, holocaust and natural environment are among the topics covered by the six new pan-European research infrastructure projects that were announced today as part of the 2018 roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).

The 2018 roadmap now consists of 18 'ESFRI Projects', which are new initiatives in development phase requiring around €2.9 billion of investments in the coming years, and 37 'ESFRI Landmarks', identifying key research infrastructures that are being implemented or have been completed, representing an overall capital value of around €14.4 billion.

The six new facilities will help push the boundaries of science in the following areas:

• Energy
  • IFMIF-DONES: A facility for testing, validation and qualification of the materials to be used in a fusion reactor (coordinated by Spain)
• Environment
  • DiSSCo: An infrastructure integrating natural history collections of major European institutions (coordinated by The Netherlands)
  • eLTER: An infrastructure integrating ecosystem research sites across Europe (coordinated by Germany)
• Health and Food
  • EU-IBISBA: A multidisciplinary research and innovation infrastructure for industrial biotechnology (coordinated by France)
  • METROFOOD-RI: An infrastructure for metrology services in food and nutrition throughout the value chain (coordinated by Italy)
• Social and cultural innovation
  • EHRI: An infrastructure for research on Holocaust (coordinated by The Netherlands)

The new roadmap also identified two areas with high potential for the development of new research infrastructures: religious studies and transition to open science.

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