Italy and the United Kingdom partners in cutting edge scientific cooperation

As part of an ever increasing bilateral scientific cooperation, Pasquale Terracciano, the Ambassador of Italy to the UK, visited today the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) of the University of Cambridge. EBI, a pioneer centre in the bioinformatics sector, is part of European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and is formed of groups that are specialised in research and services which provide biological data and tools for a better understanding of data on the genome.

The Ambassador met with Dame Janet Thornton, Director of EBI, Niklas Blomberg, Director of Elixir (a pan-European research infrastructure for biological information) and Prof. Graziano Pesole, Director of the Institute of Biomembrane and Bioenergy, Italian National Research Council (CNR), in regards to the Italian participation in this important project.

Ambassador Terracciano later visited the Battock Centre for Experimental Astrophysics to discuss Italian involvement in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, the most ambitious international radio astronomy project which is currently in the planning phase.