The 2025 Australian & European Health Research Infrastructure Symposium, held from 16-18 September at the Monash University Prato Centre in Italy, united leaders from major Australian and European research infrastructures to strengthen international partnerships and tackle shared challenges in health and life sciences.
The three-day meeting focused on building a globally connected research infrastructure ecosystem capable of responding to emerging challenges – from data-driven research and artificial intelligence to global health crises and climate-related threats.
Participants included senior leadership from the NCRIS Health Group and (Bioplatforms Australia, National Imaging Facility, Therapeutic Innovation Australia, Phenomics Australia, Population Health Research Network, Microscopy Australia and EMBL Australia) and their European colleagues from European infrastructures such as BBMRI-ERIC, Euro-BioImaging, EATRIS, ELIXIR, ECRIN, Infrafrontier, EU-OPENSCREEN and Instruct-ERIC.
Over 50 delegates from the Australian National Research Infrastructure (NRI) Advisory Group, the European Commission (EC), the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Association, and the European Federation for Cancer Images (EUCAIM) participated in discussions and interactive sessions on shared priority areas, including:
- Tackling global health challenges through coordinated research infrastructures
- Artificial intelligence in health and life sciences
- Innovation, translation, and data-driven research
- Training and workforce development
- Industry and community drivers for distributed research initiatives
- Sustainability, policy, and leadership in research infrastructure
EMBL Australia Scientific Head Professor Jose Polo said the Prato symposium enabled international research infrastructure specialists to explore opportunities for joint programs, share best practices and identify priority areas for future collaboration.
“The meeting between European and Australian national research infrastructure leaders was extremely valuable as we further strengthened our relationship across borders,” Professor Polo said.
“In an era where the quality and amount of scientific data is paramount, the training of our researchers, and the research infrastructure that helps generate and keep this data, is more important than ever.
“Building on our complementary expertise, a unified approach can drive real impact toward our shared scientific goals.”
The event highlighted the importance of open science, cross-capability interactions, and the pooling of knowledge, data, and talent to accelerate impactful health research across continents.
“This is the third time we have met, following the inaugural 2023 Symposium in Prato and a 2024 meeting in Brisbane,” EMBL Australia Council Chair Professor Ian Smith said.
“We have developed mutual understanding, identified shared priorities and confirmed joint interest towards structured collaboration across continents. There is now clear momentum, trust and community commitment to move from dialogue to action.”
Prof Smith said a forthcoming white paper will outline the steps and funding instruments needed to realise the full potential of Australia-Europe RI collaboration.
Organised by EMBL Australia, PHRN, ERIC Forum, BBMRI-ERIC, INFRAFRONTIER and Bioplatforms Australia, and supported by Phenomics Australia, Therapeutic Innovation Australia, National Imaging Facility and Microscopy Australia, the symposium underscored the value of international partnerships in addressing complex health challenges and advancing research infrastructure for the benefit of global communities.