NADIR - The Network of Animal Disease Infectiology Research Facilities

Europe possesses several experiment facilities holding the level 3 of bio safety, which is required to study the large majority of zoonoses, emerging diseases and a number of other animal infectious diseases. Most of them are nevertheless loosely connected, leading to redundancy. NAIF has as its strategic aim to realize the potential European leadership in animal infectiology by bringing together 14 L3 animal experiment infrastructures and organizing the facilities in order to optimize their investigation and diagnostic/validation tools, achieve economies of scale and use the saved resources to modernize existing facilities in a coordinated manner.
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To achieve these goals, NADIR will
<UL> <LI> Internally, upgrade the collaboration between the partners by setting an Internet-based joint workspace, strengthening the share of knowledge, best practices and ethical considerations, commonly managing biological resources, organizing transnational access to the involved infrastructures, and jointly executing research activities designed to improve the services provided by these facilities;
<LI>Externally, enhance access to the network s infrastructures by setting up a electronic portal presenting all the infrastructures and services offered by the network in a unified way, providing access of non-member institutions to these infrastructures, coordinating actions with other relevant initiatives, and jointly presenting safety and ethical recommendations.
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NADIR is organized around four types of activities:<ul>
<LI>Three networking activities, consisting of internal and external communication, knowledge and best practices sharing, and biological resources joint management;
<LI>Three research activities, made up of characterizing animal lines, improvement of infection monitoring tools, and development of new infection models for emerging diseases;
<LI> As many transnational access activities as infrastructures involved in the network;
<LI>One project management work package.