Institut français de bioinformatique

The French Institute of Bioinformatics (IFB) is a national research infrastructure delivering a wide range of services in bioinformatics, including computation and storage, software development, training, and support to research projects. It comprises 21 member platforms, 7 contributing platforms, and 8 associated teams covering various areas of biology and its applications. As the French node of the European ELIXIR network, it plays a key role in coordinating bioinformatics activities at the European level. The IFB operates a decentralized digital infrastructure, the National Network of Computational Resources (NNCR), which encompasses clusters and clouds totaling 35,000 cores, 20 PB of storage, and 270 TB of RAM. It provides access to over 800 software tools via different user interfaces. Following strong support from stakeholder organizations, the IFB secured funding for various projects, including the MUDiS4LS project for deploying a shared digital infrastructure and to orchestrate the FAIR management of biological data throughout its life cycle, as well as the ABBA project for accelerating bioinformatics applications. The structuring of the infrastructure and the expertise of its platforms led IFB to contribute to the response to the COVID-19 crisis through the development of the EMERGEN platform for genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2. Its relevance to the needs of the biology community is demonstrated by the number of domain-specific projects (microbiology, marine biodiversity, agroecology, microbiology) on which the IFB has been called upon to develop innovative and effective solutions, particularly in the context of PEPR calls. Internationally, the IFB is involved in initiatives promoting open science, health, and environmental research. In recognition of its contributions, it was labeled in 2022 as the Thematic Reference Center for biology and health data under the Recherche Data Gouv plan