AMBER · Advanced Multiscale Biological Imaging using European Infrastructures

The AMBER consortium has been assembled for the exploitation and development of large-scale European infrastructures to address key needs for biological imaging. This covers length scales from molecular, through cellular, to tissue, organ and organism levels of organisation. AMBER brings together four research centres and three large scale research infrastructures with a wide range of competence including clinical practitioners, biological and biomedical scientists, physical scientists, and facility/infrastructure experts. We exploit an ongoing convergence in the scientific landscape in terms of European central facility development, data management, and data analysis and interpretation, coupled with the explosive growth in the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches. It is hard to imagine a time for which there has been a bigger need to bring together communities from different fields in an adaptive and progressive way. In addition to the gaps of knowledge that exist between different levels of organisation (e.g., between molecular and cellular levels), there are also major gaps in scientific culture – for example between clinical and fundamental science. AMBER will create fellows with unprecedented medical, biological, and methodological capabilities, with a profound potential impact for Europe’s next generation of research and researchers. This 5-year programme will recruit 42 post-doctoral research fellows, in three calls of 14 fellows each, with each fellowship of 36-month duration. Work will include technique development, particularly in terms of combining imaging techniques and data to provide a more integrated picture of life processes in the context of health & disease. Fellows that have completed this programme will be extraordinarily well equipped to further their career in academia, at infrastructures, in the health and MedTech sectors, and beyond.