Support for European Access to Life Sciences (SEALS)

Charlotte Edwards-Gayle and Nathan Cowieson at Diamond's bioSAXS beamline, B21, which is available for mail-in sample processing

European-based research groups can apply for support (travel and subsistence) from the Horizon 2020 iNEXT Discovery partnership as well as Instruct-ERIC to access Diamond’s macromolecular crystallography beamlines, B21's bioSAXS mail-in service, cryo soft X-ray tomography and cryo super resolution fluorescence microscopy at B24, and cryo-electron microscopy at the Electron Bio-Imaging Centre (eBIC).

Please note that we ask all users including those who already have approved proposals with Diamond to apply to one of these schemes to enable us to provide financial support for your experiments.

These pages provide full details on the access routes and instruments available, how to apply, and details of the review process. You can navigate through these topics using the ‘In This Section’ panel on the top left-hand side of this page.

iNEXT Discovery is a funding stream for structural biology, which is itself funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 871037. It has a total of 23 partners (participating institutions) throughout Europe. 

A distinct advantage of iNEXT Discovery is that it provides access to state of the art structural biology infrastructures across Europe. Funding also ensures that access to these instruments is constantly developed and enhanced and outreach to new users is supported. The funding also contributes to developing new access routes, for example development of synchrotron-based X-ray fragment screening for lead drug discovery, which has greatly benefitted from funding via iNEXT and iNEXT Discovery, and ready access to high-end microscopes for cryoEM. These projects can only continue their success with the engagement of the user community, and so we stress again the importance of submitting your research proposals directly to iNEXT Discovery.

Researchers from all EU countries: experts and non-experts in structural biology are welcome to apply. There are three themes of access: technology tracks, signature access and thematic calls. Diamond offers Technology Track and Signature access.

1. Technology Track

• SAXS and MX data collection: B21; I23  
• Ligand screening and serial crystallography: I24; VMXi
• High resolution data collection: eBIC

2. Signature Access

• Drug discovery: Fragment screening: I04-1 (XChem)
• In-cell structural biology: X-ray imaging; CLEM/EM tomography: B24; eBIC

Instruct-ERIC is a pan-European research infrastructure in structural biology, making high-end technologies and methods available to all European researchers.

Researchers from Instruct member countries can request access to the service/technologies offered through the Instruct-ERIC Centres.

Click here to check if you qualify for Instruct ERIC funding.