Research infrastructures

Research infrastructures are a prerequisite for conducting research. They support organised research and doctoral education, as well as maintain and develop the capacity for research. In addition to Faculty research infrastructures, we participate in several international research infrastructure networks.
What is a research infrastructure?

Typical research infrastructures include

  • Equipment, research and measuring stations, research vessels and specialist laboratories
  • Research material collections and databases, archives and libraries
  • Telecommunications networks, centres for high-performance computing and other computing capacity
  • Infrastructure maintenance and upkeep, as well as support services provided to users.
Explore research infrastructure facilities

Several research infrastructure facilities of the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences and HiLIFE offer research services, instruments, facilities and technologies for academic research groups, companies and authorities subject to a fee.

University of Helsinki Life Science Research Infrastructures are available as HiLIFE platforms to all University of Helsinki researchers as well as users outside the UH.

This equipment list is for Faculty staff only and requires logging in to the Flamma intranet.
Research infrastructure networks

ESFRI Roadmap infrastructures

ESFRI – European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures

The ESFRI Roadmap drawn up by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) is aimed at establishing pan-European research infrastructures to serve European research communities and business operators, and to provide globally competitive research environments.

Instruct-ERIC is a research infrastructure consortium in structural biology, making high-end technical solutions, special expertise and training available to all European researchers. Finland is a member of Instruct-ERIC by treaty, and the consortium is one of the Landmarks of the ESRFRI Roadmap.

The University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences coordinates Finland’s Instruct-ERIC operations and Instruct Center Finland (Professor Sarah Butcher and Docent Hanna Oksanen).

Contributing to the operations is Biocomplex, the Faculty’s biomolecular complex purification unit, which specialises in sample preparation.

FINMARI Finnish Marine Research Infrastructure

The Finnish Marine Research Infrastructure FINMARI combines the complementary resources of the most important operators in Finland involved in Baltic research. The Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) coordinates FINMARI, with the Tvärminne Zoological Station (University of Helsinki) serving as the consortium’s deputy coordinator. Consortium partners include the University of Turku, Åbo Akademi University, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Geological Survey of Finland and Natural Resources Institute Finland.

Part of the roadmap for Finnish research infrastructures from 2014, FINMARI offers researchers access to a versatile marine research infrastructure composed of field stations, research vessels, experimental laboratories as well as coastal measuring platforms and buoys.

More infrastructure networks

Our Faculty also participates in many other infrastructure networks.