Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique

Brief Description The IRSNB is the third largest European natural history museum. It serves as Belgium’s National Focal Point to the Global Taxonomy Initiative. Its three missions are (1) research, (2) curation and management of collections, and (3) providing scientific expertise, services and public education in particular through permanent and temporary exhibits, conferences etc. The IRSNB houses a diverse and exceptionally rich zoological collection, palaeoanthropology, prehistoric items and a diverse mineral collection. The total is in the order of 37,000,000 specimens with around 100,000 primary types. This places IRSNB among the world top ten collections in terms of volume of specimen stored and available for research. The scientific library of the IRSNB offers a vast range of books and magazines (695,368 volumes/7,000 periodicals). Taxonomic expertise is present for many groups of invertebrates and vertebrates worldwide, and in all sorts of ecosystems, i.e. terrestrial, freshwater and marine. Geographical areas of taxonomical expertise are the fauna of Belgium and of other regions of the world as Africa, SE Asia, Papua New Guinea, South America, Russia and Antarctica. The IRSNB is a partner in numerous European biodiversity-related initiatives such as CETAF, ENBI, SciColl, ECOOP, SYNTHESYS, EDIT, BHL-Europe. Role / Commitment in ALICE The IRSNB will lead WP4 'Training and outreach’. Within WP4 it will organise and deliver ALICE training resources, undertake networking activities to enhance use of ALICE tools and services and will act as liaison between the user community and the help-desk, thus providing users' needs feedback towards WP2 and WP3. Relevant experience The IRSNB is the coordinator for the BE-TAF partners in the highly successful SYNTHESYS project. The IRSNB also plays a leading role in other current EU projects. In EDIT, IRSNB is workpackage leader of 'Training and Public Awareness'. Profile (qualifications & experience) of individuals undertaking the work Prof Dr Thierry Backeljau (Leader WP4): Is currently acting head of the Department of Invertebrates at the IRSNB and Associate Professor (Genetics) at the University of Antwerp. In this latter capacity he developed a highly accessed Blackboard internet course module that underpins his teaching seminars. He is project leader of the “Joint Experimental Molecular Unit” (JEMU), a research infrastructure for collection-based taxonomic and phylogenetic DNA research, shared by IRSNB and RMCA, and which has been appointed by the Belgian Science Policy Department as Belgian focal point for DNA barcoding. He is also leader of the “Training and Public Awareness” workpackage in the EU-funded NoE “European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy” (EDIT) and was workpackage leader in the EU-funded research projects MAS3-CT95-0042 “AMBIOS: Integrating environmental and population variation: a model for biodiversity studies” and EVK3-2001-00048 “EUMAR: European Marine Genetic Biodiversity”. In addition he was member of the NSF Steering Committee “Coordination of Research on the Northern Atlantic” (CORONA; Duke University, North Carolina, USA), while he was/is leader of 23 (inter)nationally funded research projects involving Belgian, Spanish and Portuguese partners. His main research interests focus on taxonomy, population genetics and molecular systematics of diverse animal groups, but with speciation and (adaptive) radiations as 'fils rouge'. As such, he is (co-)author of 203 research papers (e.g. in Nature, PNAS, Trends in Genetics, Biological Reviews, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Nucleic Acids Research, Molecular Ecology, etc.), 34 popular scientific papers and 9 course syllabuses and software manuals (826 pp.). He supervised hitherto 16 PhD, 32 MSc, and 10 Industrial Engineer dissertations, and acts as manuscript reviewer for > 60 research journals and as project reviewer for NSF (USA), NERC (UK), Wellcome Trust (UK), Leverhulme Trust (UK), ANEP (Spain), National Geographic, Board of the Australian Museum, NRF (South Africa), Israel Science Foundation, etc. Dr Isabella Van de Velde (training management and outreach): Currently IRSNB team leader in WP8 ‘Training and Public Awareness’ of the EU-funded EDIT project. Within this work package, she is responsible for the elaboration and establishment of the ‘Distributed European School of Taxonomy’, organisation and management of training activities. In this context she manages the DEST training website. She is member of the EDIT Scientific Management Group and participates at Network Steering Committee meetings. She was involved in the SYNTHESYS project management for BE-TAF. She provided training to staff of the Federal Institutions on ‘Collection conservation and management’ on behalf of the Federal Government.