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Three major funding bodies from Austria, Finland and Germany have agreed to launch the multinational funding initiative "ELSA-GEN".

The Austrian Genome Research Programme GEN-AU was launched in 2001 by the Austrian Ministry for Science and Research, BMWF, to strengthen Austria’s competitiveness in genomics research. Provided with approximately 100 Mio € and a duration of ten years, GEN-AU is Austria’s largest programme life science programme.
Funding activities are focused on cooperative and interdisciplinary research projects, in addition dealing with the impact of genome research on society.
GEN-AU’s unique funding scheme allows for the direct integration of ELSA researchers into life science consortia as well as for ELSA genomics research consortia, establishing a competitive Austrian ELSA genomics research community.
Funding the ELSA-GEN initiative is a further step to build on those achievements, allowing the Austrian research community to grow and enter into new research fields, making use of the opportunities offered by the diverse European ELSA genomics research landscape.

The DLR- Project Management Agency (PT-DLR) (http://www.dlr.de/pt/en) is one of the major research funding organisations in Germany and supports the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi), along with other Federal Ministries with regard to research management and the implementation of governmental programmes for research funding.
Within PT-DLR, the department for Health Research is the largest department. It manages the manifold governmental programmes of the health research sector with an annual budget of about 200 Mio. €. One of the largest is the programme “Health Research: Scientific Research for the People” (www.gesundheitsforschung-bmbf.de/en/). In addition, the National Genome Research Network (http://www.ngfn.de/index_en.htm) and an autonomous ELSA- programme (http://www.gesundheitsforschung-bmbf.de/en/186.php) are managed by PT-DLR.
The German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) considers research on ethical, legal, economical and societal aspects (ELSA) of modern life sciences as a highly important issue. Since 1997, BMBF has run several national funding initiatives, which focus on a variety of topics and aim at different target groups. The present ELSA-Gen initiative is the second international ELSA funding measure, and is in line with the “Strategy for Internationalisation of sciences and research” adopted by the Federal Cabinet in 2008.

The Academy of Finland is the prime funding agency for basic research in Finland. The Academy operates within the administrative sector of the Ministry of Education. The Academy of Finland’s mission is to advance scientific research and its application, support international scientific cooperation, act as an expert organ in science policy issues and allocate funding to research and other advancement of science.
The Academy works to promote the progress of science by allocating funding to the highest-quality and the scientifically most innovative research. The Academy provides funding to support the international cooperation of cutting-edge research teams and units and to support their efforts to make their research environments more attractive and internationally competitive.

The ELSA-GEN partners from Austria, Finland and Germany are funding the “ELSA-GEN” Initiative in 2008-2013 to support multi-national collaborative research in ethical, legal, socio-cultural and economic aspects of genomics research and related sciences in order to:

• to promote high-quality multi- and interdisciplinary research collaborations in ethical, legal, socio-cultural and economic aspects of genomics research and related sciences among researchers in the participating countries,
• to stimulate networking and mobility of researchers between the countries,
• to promote research training.

This initiative will cover ELSA research on ethical, legal, socio-cultural and economic aspects on developments within the field of genomics and related sciences which are characterized by genome-wide or systemic approaches covering proteomics, lipidomics, metabolomics etc., as well as systems biology and synthetic biology.

Research consortia comprised by a minimum of two researchers or institutions from at least two partner countries will be funded for three years.

Although the ELSA-GEN partners fund and manage the initiative jointly, they will only fund the research project components from applicants within their own country.

The representatives of the funding bodies will jointly be responsible for the scientific and administrative coordination of the "ELSA-GEN" Initiative.