EMBL Grenoble 50th Anniversary

EMBL’s French site was officially founded in 1975 to focus on structural biology research, services, and instrumentation development.

In 1975, EMBL signed an agreement with the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) to establish a French site in Grenoble to use neutron beams to investigate biological structures.

When the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) was built in the 1990s on the ILL and EMBL Grenoble campus, it boosted structural biology research with the addition of X-ray macromolecular crystallography.

In 2002, EMBL, ESRF, ILL, and the CNRS/Université Joseph Fourier (now the French Institut de Biologie Structurale) signed the Partnership for Structural Biology, strengthening the structural biology community on what became the European Photon and Neutron (EPN) science campus. The collaboration benefits from complementary expertise and shared scientific services.

Find out more about EMBL Grenoble History.