Amber Project

This initiative is being made at a time when remarkable changes are occurring on the scientific landscape in terms of facility developments, data management, and data analysis and interpretation. It is hard to imagine a time for which there has been a bigger need to bring together communities from different fields in an adaptive and progressive way. The current gap between clinical and fundamental science is a great challenge given the importance of relating in vitro biomedical research with in vivo and ex vivo results.

The AMBER consortium and the program has been designed to bridge these fields – at a time in which there are massive technical and methodological developments in Europe at central facility X-ray and neutron beam sources, and complementary techniques. There is also explosive growth and increasing convergence in the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches. AMBER brings together and enables medical, biological, and methodological capabilities in an unprecedented way, with a profound potential impact for Europe’s next generation research and next generation researchers.

ABOUT THE IMPLEMENTING ORGANISATIONS

Lund University (in Lund, Sweden)

Specifically two major organisations hosted by Lund Unviersity are active in AMBER:

• LINXS Institute for advanced Neutron and X-ray Science (coordinating AMBER)
  LINXS is an advanced study institute whose mission is to promote science and education focusing on the use of neutrons and X-rays, to attract world-leading scientists for short-term focused research visits, and to create international networks.
• The MAX IV Laboratory
  MAX IV is a Swedish national laboratory providing scientists with the most brilliant X-rays for research with Lund University as the host university. The facility is funded primarily by Swedish and international research funders, consortia, and 14 Swedish research universities. MAX IV delivers high-quality X-ray light for research in materials and life sciences. The facility was inaugurated 21 June 2016.
• AMBER postdoctoral fellowships at Lund University will be hosted at the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Science, and the Faculty of Engineering

The International Institute of Molecular Mechanisms and Machines (IMOL) of the Polish Academy of Sciences (in Warszawa, Poland)

IMol has been established to conduct scientific research and provide training in the fields of biological, chemical, medical, biotechnological, bioinformatics, biophysical, pharmacological, and similar sciences, in the international environment conducive to collaborative efforts, research and development interactions with biotechnological industry, and wide dissemination of our results. They aim at the development of solutions that will help everyone on this planet live a safer life.

The European Spallation Source ESS ERIC (in Lund, Sweden)

The European Spallation Source (ESS) is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), a multi-disciplinary research facility based on the world’s most powerful neutron source. Their vision is to build and operate the world’s most powerful neutron source, enabling scientific breakthroughs in research related to materials, energy, health and the environment, and addressing some of the most important societal challenges of our time.

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory EMBL

With 29 member states, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) has more than 110 independent research groups and service teams covering the spectrum of molecular biology at six sites in Barcelona, Grenoble, Hamburg, Heidelberg, EMBL-EBI Hinxton, and Rome.

The Institut Laue Langevin ILL (in Grenoble, France)

The Institut Laue-Langevin is an international research centre at the leading edge of neutron science and technology. As the world’s flagship centre for neutron science, the ILL provides scientists with a very high flux of neutrons feeding some 40 state-of-the-art instruments, which are constantly being developed and upgraded. As a service institute the ILL makes its facilities and expertise available to visiting scientists. Every year, about 1400 researchers from over 40 countries visit the ILL and 1000 experiments selected by a scientific review committee are performed. Research focuses primarily on fundamental science in a variety of fields: condensed matter physics, chemistry, biology, nuclear physics and materials science, among others.

The Leicester Institute for Structural and Chemical Biology LISCB at the University of Leceister (in Leicester, UK)

The Institute for Structural and Chemical Biology includes experts engaged in work that could ultimately lead to new medical treatments, securing support from pharmaceutical companies and other funders. The University of Leicester has a long history of using structural biology to answer challenging questions in biology and accelerate drug discovery. We do so using different techniques, each able to address different questions and generate 3D structures of biomolecules in detail. The latest such technique is our state-of-the-art Cryo-EM facility, which complements our outstanding NMR and crystallography capabilities.

The LISCB were part of the AMBER application, and is participating in AMBER with funding from the UKRI under a financing mechanism which allowed UK organisations to participate in Horizon Europe before the current official association status was put in place on the 7th of September 2023.