The EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute is the outstation of EMBL with the primary responsibility of providing bioinformatics services to European researchers. Our mission is:

• To provide freely available data and bioinformatics services to all facets of the scientific community in ways that promote scientific progress
• To contribute to the advancement of biology through basic investigator-driven research in bioinformatics
• To provide advanced bioinformatics training to scientists at all levels, from PhD students to independent investigators
• To help disseminatecutting-edge technologies to industry
• To coordinatebiological data provision across Europe

As part of our support for industry, we have established an annual series of information workshops based in various locations across Europe. These workshops are designed to allow SMEs to hear about molecular and genomic databases and services that are provided freely by EMBL-EBI and our collaborators, to understand the international data sharing agreements underlying these data resources and the road map for future developments.

Biocat is the cluster organization that coordinates biotechnology and medical technologies in Catalonia, the main bioregion of Spain. It promotes relationships and synergies among the BioRegion of Catalonia stakeholders, that include more than 481 companies (biotech, pharma and services), 449 research groups on life sciences, 80 related research centers, 19 science and technology parks focused in biomedicine, 12 universities offering studies in life sciences and 15 big research hospitals. Catalonia also has 9 high level scientific and technological big infrastructures created during the last years.

The BioRegion of Catalonia has become one of the great biotechnology hubs in Spain and an outstanding cluster in Southern Europe. As a group, Catalan biotech companies have an estimated turnover of €15,600 million per year, which accounts for 29.4% of the national total in the sector. By number of companies, Catalonia is ranked second in Spain, with 20.5% of the total, only behind Madrid, and first with regard to the creation of new companies, with 23% of the total in 2010. Furthermore, capitalization of Catalan companies in the sector has tripled in the past two years and reached €2,357 million in 2010, mostly from private sources.

The Spanish National Bioinformatics Institute (‘Instituto Nacional de Bioinformática’ in Spanish, or short INB) is an institutional platform founded in 2003 by the mayor bioinformatics research groups in Spain with financing from Genome Spain (‘Genoma España’ ). It is now part of the Carlos III Health Institute (‘Instituto de Salud Carlos III‘ or ISCIII) and its overarching mission is to disseminate and provide bioinformatics support to laboratories, research institutions and companies throughout Spain. The INB serves in the coordination, integration and development of Spanish bioinformatics resources in projects in the areas of genomics, proteomics and translational medicine. It has contributed to the creation of a consistent computational infrastructure in the area of bioinformatics, participated in national and international genome projects, and trained bioinformatics users and developers.

The Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB) is a joint research group of IMIM-Hospital del Mar Research Institute and Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). The GRIB carries out fundamental research and technological developments on the application of advanced information technologies and computational methods in the health and life sciences. GRIB brings together a multidisciplinary team of more than seventy scientists.

The workshop will introduce bioinformatics tools and data resources and will present the opportunities for SMEs to use and integrate these resources in order to derive business benefit from the existing and developing infrastructure.
The topics of the workshop have been specifically selected on the basis of previous interactions with SMEs, priorities specified by SMEs as part of a recent user survey and discussions with a regional focus group. The data resources and services include:

• Genomic resources: the Ensembl genome browser and the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA)
• Proteomics resources: UniProt and InterPro
• Chemical resources: the ChEMBL database, ChEBI and MetaboLights
• Functional genomics: ArrayExpress and the Gene Expression Atlas
• Molecular interactions: the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and ligand information
• The Enzyme Portal
• Integration services and EBI Search
• Web services

There will also be an opportunity to hear from several companies based in the region and for some hands-on tutorials. The registration costs for the workshop have been highly subsidised through the sponsorship of EMBL-EBI (a non-profit intergovernmental organisation).