Roadmap for the development of a sustainable IBISBA infrastructure

Addressing a gap in European industrial biotechnology, IBISBA’s mission is to provide world-class cutting-edge research infrastructure services enabling the development of industrial biotechnology as a technological cornerstone of the circular bioeconomy. In this regard, IBISBA aims to contribute to the delivery of Europe’s ambition to be the first climate neutral continent in 2050. To fulfil its mission, IBISBA is building an interoperable network involving some of Europe’s most significant, public-operated research infrastructures and the deployment of advanced digital networking tools. Belonging to IBISBA endows facilities with unprecedented collaborative capabilities that seamlessly link individual facility services and data assets within service workflows supporting whole R&D project life cycles. This means that IBISBA is uniquely geared to deliver translational research services, organizing the uptake and sharing of fundamental knowledge from different scientific disciplines to define new bioprocess concepts, build and test prototypes and perform pilot scale demonstrations. Since its origins in 2014, IBISBA has steadily grown in terms of numbers of partners involved, community maturity and organization. IBISBA’s progress has been significantly boosted by funding received in the framework of two European Horizon 2020 projects (IBISBA 1.0 and PREP-IBISBA, grant agreement numbers 730976 and 871118 respectively) and by enhanced recognition following its inclusion in 2018 the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures’ roadmap. Presently, IBISBA is pursuing its progress towards a fully operational research infrastructure following a process that involves numerous preparative actions. Considering achievements so far, this report is a non-scientific action plan that outlines 25 vital actions that must be successfully accomplished to deliver IBISBA’s ambition, launching a legal entity before 2025 to achieve this. Some of these actions have already been reached, while other actions are ongoing or planned.