Grant: Planning Grants - Priority Announcement: Ethics

Currently, ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) research still tends to proceed in disciplinary or national silos, whereby investigators in any given area are collaborating locally or nationally, but with little awareness of what is taking place elsewhere, thus duplicating efforts. Launched as a "concept" in Science (11 May 2012: Vol. 336 no. 6082 pp. 673-674), the ELSI 2.0 Collaboratory aims to anticipate and address the ethical, legal, and social implications of international genomic research. Designed to unify efforts and to catalyze international collaborations, its vision implies a strong commitment to the shared values of respect, trust and collaboration. This Collaboratory concept needs to be translated into a living ELSI infrastructure. To that end, the purpose of our proposed planning meeting is to simulate an e-governance scenario on ethics equivalency in international collaborative research so as to test the Accelerator concept. The ELSI 2.0 Accelerator seeks to promote efficient use of research and resources, while avoiding redundancy and duplication of effort. Topics to be addressed at the proposed planning meeting will include defining human resources and other components, devising an IT structure, funding strategy, administration and e-governance of genomic research by international collaboration and consortia.