— Internal · DIGIT · 2026–2027
Building bridges for excellence in multi-omics. A one-year project that helps the Institute for Anthropological Research build international consortia, train its researchers in European project work, and open its multi-omics infrastructure to other groups.
INANTRO is one of the few institutions in Croatia with metabolomics, metagenomics and bioinformatics under one roof. INANTRO_Connect puts that combination to work on European proposals in multi-omics biomarker discovery and digital tools for preventing metabolic syndrome and other non-communicable diseases.
The project combines networking at conferences and brokerage events with preliminary microbiome and metabolome research that strengthens the proposals. It also trains researchers through workshops and secondments and showcases the Institute's laboratories through an open day, a demonstration session and lab tours.
Funded under the Digital, Innovation and Green Technology Project (DIGIT), implemented by the Ministry of Science, Education and Youth and the Croatian Science Foundation and financed through World Bank loan No. 9558-HR.
Build two international consortia of at least ten partners each, including an SME and a public health organisation, and draft two Horizon Europe proposals, one coordinated by INANTRO.
Train INANTRO researchers in proposal writing, budgeting, project management and open science, so they can lead future international submissions.
Make the Institute's research infrastructure better known and more widely used, in Croatia and internationally.
Partner search at three conferences and a brokerage event, partner meetings, and external expert review of the proposal drafts.
A comparison of Illumina and Oxford Nanopore microbiome sequencing, and GC-QTOF methods for biomarker discovery, both run on INANTRO biobank samples and written up as SOPs.
Training abroad for three researchers, secondments at the University of Copenhagen and The Lisbon Council in Brussels, and workshops at INANTRO on innovation, project acquisition and open science.
INANTRO_OpenDay, a hands-on demonstration session using the preliminary datasets, lab tours, and a short video on the Institute's facilities.
Coordination, reporting and communication over the twelve months of the project.
The project builds on the Centre for Applied Bioanthropology, equipped in 2018 with ERDF funding.
LC- and GC-QTOF mass spectrometry, ICP-MS/MS with laser ablation.
Illumina MiSeq, Oxford Nanopore PromethION and real-time PCR.
Confocal high-content imaging.
In-house computing for large datasets, statistics and AI, run by our lab.
We work with research groups, clinics and companies on exposome, multi-omics and machine-learning projects, and welcome students looking for a thesis topic.
