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BioStruct-X: EU Funding for MX and XI Experiments at BESSY II

Introduction

HZB is member of the BioStruct-X consortium with 19 partners from 11 EU member and associated states to support access for established and emerging key methods in structural biology. Eleven facilities from across Europe provide 44 installations for applications in small angle X‐ray scattering (SAXS), macromolecular X‐ray crystallography (MX) biological X ray imaging (XI) protein production and high throughput crystallisation (PP & HTX).

BioStruct-X is  funded by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) of the European Commission as part of the Capacities Specific Programme Research Infrastructures (Project Number 283570).

General

Within the BioStruct-X activity, HZB has received funds for Transnational Access, foreseen for support of external HZB users coming from EU Member States or Associated States.
The EU funds provide free access to the HZB MX and XI beamlines at BESSY II and provide support for travel and subsistence expenses for usually two young scientist per experiment. Upon consultation with HZB, the stay at HZB can be extended for preparation and data reduction.

The BioStruct-X activity starts with 1 September 2011 and ends with 30 August 2015.

Criteria for Eligibility of user groups and Proposal submission

To be eligible to benefit from the Access to BESSY II under the BioStruct-X action, a user group must satisfy the following conditions:

• both the user group leader and the majority of the user group members must be affiliated to an institute located in a EU Member State (except Germany) or in an EU Associated State. (Note: the affiliation of the researchers is decisive - and not their nationality)
• a BioStruct-X BAG proposal must be submitted to BioStruct-X prior to the experiment at BESSY II and successfully negotiated by BioStruct-X. If the proposal then is technical feasible at BESSY II approved by the HZB Scientific Selection Panel by submission of a regular access proposal to HZB beamtime is allocated.
• the user group is entitled to publicise all results of the EU BioStruct-X supported experiments.

Peer Review by facility independent user group selection panel

The proposals submitted to BioStruct-X  will be evaluated by the BioStruct-X Project Evaluation Committee (PEC)  for eligibility for EU funding and beamtime will be approved by the HZB Scientific Selection Panel. The Panel assesses the scientific merits of all proposals and decides on priorities and beam time allocation.

Please contact the HZB User Office Photons for any further questions.

Additional obligations for groups with EU-NMI3 II supported projects

As a condition of accepting EU support for a proposal, the user must agree to the following conditions.

• Acknowledgements
  The support by the BioStruct-X project must be acknowledged in any papers or conference proceedings that are published as a result of this work. The following paragraph must be included in the acknowledgments section:
  
  "The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under BioStruct-X (grant agreement N°283570)."
• Completion of the experimental report form for EU use (HZB data base)
  The BioStruct-X guidelines of the European Commission foresee that EU supported users should provide a short experimental report (EUREP), where the objectives and also the achievements/difficulties of the performed experiment are summarised.
  
  HZB users are requested to use the online report form of HZB for handing in these reports.
  
• User group questionnaire (EU data base)
  After the experiment, funded users are required to complete a questionnaire directly on the EU data base.
  
  concerning N° 1 of the questionnaire:
• The required EC Contract number for  all supported proposals, BioStruct-X 283570, can be selected from the pull-down menu.
  
  concerning N° 2 of the questionnaire:
  Your User Project Acronym is the BioStruct-X Proposal number.

Data protection

Users are required to provide some personal data, which will be recorded and used for the purposes indicated below. The data will be processed for funding, statistical and administrative purposes connected with their research, and to statistically analyse the membership of the neutron scattering community.

The data are collected by the BioStruct-X project manager on behalf of the European Commission, and therefore may be accessed by the BioStruct-X project coordinators and the European Commission for official use only, and will remain confidential. The personal data will be kept safe and secure and will not be shared with other organisations without the knowledge of the users, unless this is required by law. If an email address is requested by the EC, this is solely for the purpose of conducting a mid-term review if necessary, and it will not be divulged to any third party, or used for marketing purposes.

Eligible Countries for Access

Users affiliated to laboratories in one of the following countries can apply for EU funding of their BioStruct-X proposals. More information on who can participate in FP7 can be found here.

Note: Users affiliated to German laboratories are not eligible!