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Annual Report 2024

A year of exceptional life science research, services, training, industry collaboration, and integration of European life science research

Acceleration in the right direction

We celebrated 50 years of growth and achievements, but EMBL is shaping its future today

The year 2024 offered a unique opportunity to reflect on the past while also looking forward.

It wasn’t just because it was EMBL’s 50th anniversary – which was certainly an auspicious occasion. In 2024, our three-year-old ‘Molecules to Ecosystems’ programme demonstrated that it is pointing us in the right direction. EMBL is accelerating toward its next 50 years…and beyond.

In 2022, when we started this research programme, I was excited by the expanded direction in which it would lead us. Our Traversing European Coastlines (TREC) project would take molecular biology expertise into the field. We would forge new collaborations. We would push technology, bringing it into environmental settings, too. We would harness the newest, most sensitive tools to ensure success across the entire organisation and across Europe more generally. And most importantly, we would broaden EMBL’s perspective to address critical societal issues that benefit from an interwoven molecular perspective in multidisciplinary approaches.

This year’s annual report offers a glimpse into the ongoing engagement that we sparked – involvement I attribute to our amazing staff and our programme’s collaborative approach to studying life in context. The linked stories highlight the steady pace of fundamental life sciences work that increasingly shed light on the complexity of living matter, biodiversity, and ecosystem changes. I believe our work has a new sense of urgency.

Read the full foreword here

Edith Heard EMBL Director General

“EMBL is synonymous with excellence. As one of EMBL’s founding members, Italy strongly believes in its value as a leading international research organisation.”

– Anna Maria Bernini, Italian Minister of Research and University

Mission 1: Research

To perform fundamental research in molecular biology

EMBL’s research aims to understand the basis of life at a molecular level and in the context of different environments.

Seven cross-cutting research themes offered significant, diverse findings and milestones in 2024: Molecular Building Blocks, Multicellular Dynamics, Microbial Ecosystems, Infection Biology, Human Ecosystems, Planetary Biology, and Theory@EMBL.

“Tissue engineering and growing organs-on-a-chip allow us to study diseases with much more complexity and detail, as well as provide useful platforms for screening vaccine candidates.”

– Maria Bernabeu, EMBL Barcelona Group Leader

Mission 2: Services

To offer vital services to scientists in the member states and beyond

EMBL’s scientific services encompass over 40 bioinformatics and data resources and over 20 experimental services in structural biology, imaging, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, in vivo gene editing, chemical biology, and mobile labs.

Each year, EMBL prides itself on its technological offerings to users, and in 2024, this included establishing a new core facility, the Microbial Automation and Culturomics Core Facility. Naturally, the year’s highlights include much more.

“Public data were essential to the development of AlphaFold. The careful curation of such large data resources, representing the collective output of an entire subfield of biology, is exactly what enables our machine learning models to generalise well across such a huge range of proteins, enabling further breakthroughs in machine learning in other scientific areas.”

— John Jumper, Senior Director at Google DeepMind

Mission 3: Training

To train scientists, students, and visitors at all levels

EMBL training aims to foster scientific inquiry and share knowledge among scientists, students, and visitors at all levels in the life sciences.

Notably, in 2024, the European Commission renewed funding to EMBL’s unique infrastructure training programme, ARISE2. Additionally, TREC and the anniversary celebration lent themselves to important engagement activities, with impacts felt throughout Europe.

“ARISE2 is instrumental in preparing Europe’s next generation for careers in research infrastructures, which are crucial for the progression of fundamental research.”

— Geert Van Minnebruggen, Technology Director at VIB, an ARISE2 partner

Mission 4: Innovation & Translation

To actively engage in technology transfer and industry relations

EMBL’s strengths in research, services, and training make it a perfect industry partner and a breeding ground for research that sows the seeds for technology transfer. EMBL’s tech transfer arm, EMBLEM, is pivotal to that success.

In 2024, among other achievements, EMBL was engaged in several research projects with translational components. Additionally, EMBLEM introduced an inspiring and logistically helpful entrepreneurial workshop series.

“EMBL is the best example for how science should be done: international, well-equipped, with the goal of gaining deep understanding of fundamental mechanisms of biology, eventually offering solutions for diseases and preservation of our environment.”

— Hüseyin Besir, Head of R&D, BBI Solutions; Former Head of Protein Expression & Purification Core Facility at EMBL (2006–2015)

Mission 5: Integrating European Life Sciences

To coordinate and integrate European life science research

This EMBL mission stems from the principle that institutional collaborations, strategic alliances, and partnerships underpin scientific excellence across borders and disciplines.

The year provided ample opportunity for all of this, thanks to EMBL’s unique Traversing European Coastlines (TREC) project that fortified older collaborations while forging new ones. Additionally, Bulgaria became EMBL’s newest prospect member state.

“The experience of the TREC mission, with its pan-European dimension and huge potential in terms of the volume of data collected, proved that only when researchers, governments, industry, and civil society collaborate can we ensure the conservation of biodiversity and sustainability of wider ecosystems.”

– Zoe Rapti, Member of Greek Parliament; former Deputy Minister of Development, responsible for Research and Innovation, Greece, 2024

People, Processes, & Places

For many people, 2024 will be best remembered as EMBL’s 50th anniversary, with a scientific symposium that brought together its vibrant community, showcased its many scientific contributions, and drove discussions on the future of Europe’s leading life sciences laboratory.

Additionally, the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories recognised EMBL with its 2024 Outstanding Lab Programs and Initiatives Award – a notable acknowledgement of its progress in this area and one more way that EMBL is readying itself for the future.

“For me, EMBL was the place where nothing was impossible, the place enabling groundbreaking ideas to be tested and transformed into scientific innovations.”

— Maïwen Caudron-Herger, Group Leader, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ); Predoctoral Fellow at EMBL (2001–2005)

Reviews of EMBL units in 2024

EMBL Rome

EMBL’s site in Italy focuses on the interdisciplinary investigation of epigenetics and neurobiology, connecting experts who study the control of gene expression with those examining sensory processing and behavioural control. Additionally, EMBL Rome operates a set of core facilities that establish and deliver cutting-edge tools and technologies.

EMBL IT Services and Support

As new technologies enable EMBL’s scientists to acquire more – and more complex – data, the IT Services team deploys innovative approaches to help them store, analyse, and make sense of that wealth of information.This unit provides IT infrastructure, services, and support to EMBL’s scientific community and administration at all sites.

EMBL Genome Biology Unit

This unit studies how information across different molecular layers is stored, regulated, and altered during cell state transitions and in different environmental contexts, and how those changes lead to different phenotypes, including disease. Its scientists develop and combine innovative experimental and computational approaches to quantify and interpret biological processes and function.

With support from more than 30 countries, laboratories at six sites across Europe and thousands of scientists and engineers working together, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is a powerhouse of biological expertise. EMBL is an intergovernmental organisation, headquartered in Heidelberg, and was founded in 1974 with the mission of promoting molecular biology research in Europe, training young scientists, and developing new technologies.

EMBL currently employs more than 1,800 people in Barcelona, Grenoble, Hamburg, Heidelberg, EMBL-EBI Hinxton (near Cambridge), and Rome.

Publishing hundreds of research articles and hosting dozens of conferences every year, EMBL is driving visionary fundamental research and training Europe’s future scientific talent.

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