The EMBL-EBI Industry Program and Ontologies for Agriculture

An important part of EMBL-EBI’s mission is to disseminate cutting-edge technologies to industry. Many of our users are engaged in industrial R&D and our services are constantly evolving to reflect the rapidly changing needs of this crucial sector. This presentation will provide an overview of the different ways that we work with industrial companies at EMBL-EBI. The focus of the presentation will be the EMBL-EBI Industry Programme which is a programme for large end user companies of EMBL-EBI data and services. The programme is focussed on strategic meetings which help ensure the alignment of our services with the changing needs of industry, workshops as well as pre-competitive projects. Although historically most of the members have been from the pharmaceutcial industry, our members also include Unilever, Syngenta, Bayer Crop Science and Nestle.

The workshops are centred on knowledge exchange and are prioritised by our members and reflect current areas of interest. Industry members are part of the organising committee for each workshop and we seek to ensure that we have the leading key opinion leaders in the field at each workshop. Workshops are located primarily in Cambridge (UK) but also, increasingly, on the east coast of the USA.

On 19-20th April 2017 in Cambridge (UK) we are organising an Industry Programme workshop on Ontologies in Agriculture, Food and Nutrition. The key themes (scope) of the workshop are:

(1) Understanding the existing plant/crop/agriculture ontologies landscape.

(2) Data integration and operability

(3) minimum standards and meta data

(4) pre-competitive opportunities in this area

Exceptionally, we welcome expressions of interest from individuals who would be interested to contribute to workshops. If you would be interested to participate in the workshop, please send me an email to (clark@ebi.ac.uk). [Please note, however, that the purpose of the workshops are knowledge exchange and they should not be seen as an opportunity for business development.]

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