EUROPEAN RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE ON HIGHLY PATHOGENIC AGENTS

Their core work

ERINHA is a distributed European research infrastructure dedicated to the study of highly pathogenic agents — dangerous viruses and bacteria that require maximum biosafety containment (BSL-3/BSL-4 laboratories). They coordinate access to high-containment facilities across Europe, enabling researchers to safely work with dangerous pathogens. Their work spans virus archiving, outbreak response support, and providing gold-standard biological reference materials. Based in Brussels, they serve as the central coordination hub connecting Europe's fragmented network of high-security biomedical labs.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

ERINHA's early H2020 involvement (2015-2019) centered on integrating into the broader European life-science research infrastructure landscape — participating in CORBEL to align with other biomedical RIs on data management, innovation, and cross-RI services. From 2019 onward, a clear shift occurred: they moved toward operational independence and outward engagement, coordinating ERINHA-Advance to build their own sustainability model, joining EOSC-Life for cloud-based data sharing, and contributing to EVA-GLOBAL's pandemic-relevant virus archiving. The trajectory shows a maturing infrastructure moving from "joining established networks" to "building its own service portfolio and industry connections."

ERINHA is evolving from a coordination body into an operational service provider — future partners should expect them to offer concrete access to high-containment facilities, virus archives, and outbreak response capabilities.

How they like to work

ERINHA overwhelmingly participates as a partner (5 of 6 projects) rather than leading, with only one coordinator role — their own advancement project ERINHA-Advance. They operate in large consortia (133 unique partners across 27 countries), which is typical for research infrastructure organizations that connect many distributed facilities. This makes them an excellent consortium member for large-scale health or biosecurity proposals — they bring a wide network but don't typically compete for the lead role.

With 133 unique consortium partners across 27 countries, ERINHA has one of the broadest networks possible in European research — covering nearly all EU member states. Their connections span life-science research infrastructures, clinical research alliances, and open science platforms.

What sets them apart

ERINHA occupies a niche that very few organizations can claim: they are Europe's central coordination point for research on the most dangerous pathogens, the kind that require BSL-3 and BSL-4 containment. This makes them irreplaceable in any consortium addressing pandemic preparedness, biodefense, or emerging infectious diseases. For potential partners, the value is straightforward — ERINHA provides access to a distributed network of high-security labs and virus collections that would be nearly impossible to assemble independently.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ERINHA-Advance
  Their only coordinator role and by far their largest grant (EUR 1.76M) — the project that defines their institutional identity and future service model.
• EOSC-Life
  Second-largest funding (EUR 593K) and strategically important: integrating high-containment pathogen data into the European Open Science Cloud.
• EVA-GLOBAL
  Directly pandemic-relevant — maintaining Europe's virus archive with gold-standard reference materials, a capability that proved critical during COVID-19.