22-May-2025
Prof. Jose Maria Carazo has been elected as the new Chair, and Dr Evangelia Chrysina Vice-Chair of the Instruct-ERIC Council, bringing years of experience in working within the Instruct community.
They succeed Prof. Sarah Butcher of the University of Helsinki, who had been Council Chair since 2023. Prof. Butcher will remain as a member of Council, as the scientific representative for Finland.
Prof. Jose Maria Carazo, Professor and Head of the Biocomputing Unit at CNB-CSIC in Madrid, was formerly the Vice-Chair of the Council and Director of the Spanish Instruct Center.
Jose Maria commented, " I feel honoured to be the next Instruct-ERIC Council Chair. I start acknowledging that our leading Research Infrastructure is a strong reality nowadays because of the great work of many persons before me, such as our former Chair, Prof. Butcher and our former Director, Prof. Stuart. I clearly remember that the first Instruct Council Chair was Prof. Baumeister. Quite logically, the bar is set high, very high, and the challenge is substantial. Instruct must reach a broader and larger set of excellent scientists providing access to facilities with the highest quality standards and corporate values. I am confident that with Dr. Chrysina’s help as Vice Chair and with the wonderful executive team headed by our Director, Prof. Schwalbe, we will be successful.
Left to Right: Harald Schwalbe, Instruct Director; Evangelia Chrysina, Council Vice-Chair; Jose Maria Carazo, Council Chair
Evangelia Chrysina is Research Director and Group Leader at the Institute of Chemical Biology in the NHRF, in Athens. Greece joined as a full member of Instruct in 2023, and Evangelia had been on Council for Greece initially as an Observer since 2017 and then as member.
Evangelia commented, "I am so grateful that I can serve Instruct through my new role as Vice Chair of the Instruct-ERIC Council. The vision, hard work and team effort of the founding and new Council members have made Instruct an ESFRI Landmark. In the light of what has already been achieved, my vision is to keep Instruct at the forefront of disruptive and groundbreaking research in the evolving Infrastructures ecosystem. The core values to achieve this, following the Instruct leaders paradigm since its establishment, are excellence and high-quality service provision to the scientific and innovation community in Europe. I deeply appreciate Prof. Sarah Butcher’s efforts around these values, and I am looking forward to working closely with Prof. Carazo, the new Council Chair, the Council members, Prof. Schwalbe, the Instruct Director, and all Instruct governing bodies, promoting Instruct and Structural Biology in the infrastructures landscape in Europe.
Harald Schwalbe, Director of Instruct-ERIC, said, “I am very grateful to our previous chair, Prof. Sarah Butcher, for her service to Instruct. She shaped Instruct at very decisive points, including new membership from new countries, ESFRI monitoring. Now, I am happy with the election of José-Maria as chair and Evangelia as vice-chair and look forward to the new challenges for Instruct, to maintain its leading position as European research infrastructure in integrated structural biology.”
The Instruct-ERIC Council is the ultimate decision-making body in the consortium. It consists of scientific and administrative representatives from each Instruct-ERIC Member.
