In 2020, IFB launched a call for the renewal of its teams, which led in February to an update of the regional coverage. This process also led the Institute to define three modalities of contribution to the national infrastructure:

• MEMBER PLATFORMS : a team that is essentially service-oriented and participates in the three main types of activities of the national research support infrastructures: services, training and innovative developments. A member platform undertakes to develop a service that is open beyond its unit of assignment, to set up a pricing system, to adopt a quality approach, to participate periodically in full cost analyses and the collection of indicators, and to allocate a sufficient number of permanent human resources to ensure effective support for its activities. Its membership is validated by its supervisory authorities.
  
  
• CONTRIBUTING PLATFORMS : a team that is mainly service-oriented and involved in at least one of the three main types of activities of the national research support infrastructures: services, training or innovative developments. A contributing platform undertakes to allocate a sufficient number of permanent human resources to ensure effective support for their activities. It is not obliged to develop a pricing system, a quality approach, periodic participation in full cost analyses and the collection of indicators. Its membership is validated by its supervisory authorities.
  
  
• ASSOCIATED TEAMS : a team whose activities are essentially research-oriented, but which participates in the IFB's services, training and/or innovative developments. An associated team is not obliged to develop a pricing system, a quality approach, a periodic participation in the analysis of complete costs and the collection of indicators, nor to commit itself to permanent human resources. Its membership does not require validation by its supervisors.to the deployment of services, training and/or innovative developments of IFB.

Member teams are embarked in grant applications for mutualised projects (e.g. the PIA3 ESR/Equipex+ MuDiS4LS project, see last issue of the IFB Newsletter). The three adhesion modes allow the partner teams to benefit from the dynamics of IFB and its European integration via the ELIXIR infrastructure as well as other international projects, and to deploy their bioinformatics resources (tools, databases, …) on IFB national computing resources (core cluster and cloud). 

Applications were evaluated based on a duly motivated engagement letter as well as a table of indicators for the different types of activities and contributions. In total, the 2020 call led to the adhesion of 21 member facilities, 8 contributing facilities and 7 associated teams, validated by IFB board of directors. The new list of 36 partner teams is available on IFB web site. 

This update of the perimeter will undoubtedly contribute to shape the landscape of the services deployed by IFB in the forthcoming years.