Edition 15- May, 2004

The BCCM: activities and funding for the period 2004 - 2008

The BCCM consortium is pleased to an - nounce that the Belgian Council of Ministers has approved further fi nancing on 5 December 2003 of the BCCM collections under the Federal Science Policy for the next 4 years until 31 March 2008. This governmental fi nancial support enables the BCCM collections to continue their mission of preserving and distributing microbial diversity and of serving the scientifi c community.

During this period, the BCCM will become "Biological Resource Centres" as defi ned by the OECD task force (see BCCM News, No. 11). To this end, they will keep on upgrading their scientifi c expertise in the characterisation and the preservation of biological resources, implementing an effi cient quality management system, developing a powerful data management system and fostering international collaboration, linkage and exchange.

The BCCM consortium constitutes a public service facility to support research and to develop activities in biotechnology and life sciences. A scientifi c research programme will encourage partnerships between the BCCM collections and other collections or research groups. The main objectives of this programme are

to exploit the biological strains of the BCCM collections by improving the knowledge on the properties of the strains, and
to transfer BCCM expertise in ex situ preservation and characterisation of biological material as well as in the management of biological collections to other collections and laboratories. The programme will be launched in September 2004 and projects will have to be submitted to the Belgian Science Policy for evaluation on 16 November 2004 at the latest. More information will be made available on the BCCM web site http://www.belspo.be/bccm

Contact
Marleen Bosschaerts
BCCM Coordination Team
Tel.: +32 (0)2 238 36 07
Fax: +32 (0)2 230 59 12
E-mail: bosc@belspo.be

BCCM
Home

Contents
Edition 15 - May, 2004