BioData.pt, the Portuguese Research Infrastructure of Biological Data and the Portuguese node of ELIXIR, was recently assessed by its  international Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), composed by Cristina Marques (The Navigator Company), Luciano Milanesi (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy) and Jaap Heringa (ELIXIR Netherlands), hosted by the board of Directors of BioData.pt (José Pereira Leal, Chair, Mário Gaspar da Silva, Vice-Chair and Head of Node, and Ana Portugal Melo, Executive Director and Deputy head of Node).

The assessment consisted of two parts, the presentation of BioData.pt and the feedback from the SAB. The event took place at the IGC and the Champalimaud Foundation, where it was welcomed by Mónica Bettencourt-Dias (director of the IGC) and João Silveira Botelho (vice-chair of the Champalimaud Foundation), respectively. Arlindo Oliveira, president of the Instituto Superior Técnico - Universidade de Lisboa and former head of node of ELIXIR PT was also present in the second part of the event, giving his support to the path BioData.pt is following.

A general presentation of the node’s structure and operations, and its strategy for the next 5 years was delivered by Ana Portugal Melo, and a series of flash-talks delivered by the communities’ and platforms’ coordinators, Célia Miguel (Plant Sciences), Cymon Cox (Marine Metagenomics), Miguel Teixeira (Microbial Biotech); Pedro Garcia da Silva (Neurosciences), Luís Guerra e Silva (Compute), Filipa Sacadura (Industry), Ricardo Leite (User Support) and Pedro Fernandes (Training), can be found here.