The ASSEMBLE Plus project (Association of European Marine Biological Laboratories Expanded) provides to researchers and technical staff from public and private institutions access to the Toralla Marine Science Station (ECIMAT) and other 30 marine biological research institutions integrated the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC-ERIC) to carry out scientific research in the field of marine biological sciences in the frame of the transnational access (TNA) program.
The European program covers access to ecosystems and a wide variety of marine biological resources, as well as the use of the facilities, technological platforms and services of the infrastructures included in the project for a maximum of two researchers. The TNA covers also the costs of the trip, accommodation and subsistence.
At the ECIMAT, which is the main infrastructure of the Marine Research Centre of the University of Vigo, researchers can have access to experimental facilities, such as aquaria and tanks, wet and dry laboratories and mesocosms; use the technology platforms (i.e. cryopreservation, bioassays and imaging); carry out field work in coastal research vessels or use the diving equipment for accessing the ecosystem. Although the majority of researchers prefers to develop their experiments under the modality of on-site access, the program of TNA of Assemble Plus allows also the remote access to some of the services of ECIMAT, such as the collection of marine organisms in the Sothern Galician Rías, the shipment of organisms of culture collection or the supply of cultivated marine organisms without the need of travelling to ECIMAT.
The fifth call is open until the 11th of October.
The program of transnational accesses has a total of seven calls and among the four announced until now, ECIMAT received fourteen projects: three in the first two calls, six in the third call and two in the fourth call. The fifth call is open until the 11th of October. In the frame of these projects, oriented to different topics such as climate change, ecotoxicology, marine birds studies, cryopreservation of marine organisms, speciation processes, or population connectivity, the ECIMAT has received more than 20 researchers belonging to institutions of United Kingdom, Italy and Portugal.
In the following links you can read some ECIMAT access providers opinions and a videoconference presented by Fiz da Costa, local liaison officer of Assemble Plus at ECIMAT.