Dear Colleagues of the Swiss Biology community

The Mandate from the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) to the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences (SCNAT) to elaborate the next Roadmaps for Large Research Infrastructure (LRI) is expected to be  signed Mid-May 2023,  and shall cover  the years 2029-2032 in the different domains of natural sciences (Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy, Geosciences, …). The aim of these roadmaps is to collect, in a bottom-up process within the Swiss scientific communities, the ideas and visions on which LRI are needed at national and international level to stay at the forefront of international scientific research. This is all the more pressing given the exclusion of Switzerland from the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) as of September 2022 (1).

The SERI webpage (2) dedicated to the LRI and to the roadmaps provides information about the whole process, from the community roadmap to the ERI-dispatch of the Swiss Federal Council to the parliament. The SCNAT webpage (3) provides additional information about the community roadmaps and the first roadmap in Biology for the period 2025-2028, published early 2021 (3).

In anticipation of the SERI mandate and in order to meet the deadline of end 2024 for the delivery of the Biology Roadmap for Large Research Infrastructure 2029-2032, the co-President of the Platform Biology of SCNAT, Prof. Dr. Carmen Faso, cordially invites you to attend this first kickoff meeting on:

Monday, 5^th of June 2023, from 09:35-11:55 in Bern (exact place to be defined). 

For organisational purpose, we kindly ask you to register online until 17 May 2023 under https://biol.scnat.ch/de/id/27ZRB if you wish to attend this meeting and/or to be involved in the biology roadmap elaboration process.

The preliminary agenda is:

• Inform the biology community about the process and the roles of the main actors
• Define working groups
• Nominate chairs for those working groups
• Establish an editorial board 

This meeting is aimed at experts in all fields of biology interested in developing and/or already involved in Swiss or international Large Research Infrastructures. Please feel free to transmit this invitation to interested colleagues or other researchers and kindly ask them to also register online if they wish to be involved in the biology roadmap elaboration process.

For any questions, please contact the coordination team at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..