As part of the DigiBio project action plan, the University of Tartu and Tallinn University of Technology signed a partnership agreement on 7 March this year to execute the project’s aims. They will develop the laboratory research infrastructure complex and the bioengineering platform – the Estonian Biofoundry. The joint centre will be managed by the University of Tartu; to support these activities, the Institute of Bioengineering has been established.
The Estonian Biofoundry is an upgrade, catalysed by the DigiBio project, of the Estonian Bioengineering Centre (originally called the Estonian Centre for Synthetic Biology), which was established at the University of Tartu in 2016 within the framework of the European Commission-funded ERA Chair project SynBioTEC and was further developed with the help of the ERA Chair project GasFermTEC. The DigiBio project is funded under the EC Widespread for Excellence Teaming programme with 15 million euros and co-funded by the Estonian state with a further 15 million euros.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Biosustainability (DTU Biosustain), a unit of the Technical University of Denmark, will also be involved in managing the centre created at the DigiBio project stage and based on the consortium agreement concluded within it.
One of the most important goals of the cooperation is to act based on the experience of our Danish partner, DTU Biosustain, to combine digital and automated experimental tools for various bioengineering solutions and to find financial and other resources to modernize and ensure the sustainability of the bioengineering platform, including the opportunities offered by the Global Biofoundry Alliance.