Facilities and Operations

The ULiège rectoral authorities have decided to make a building available to the Institute of Epidemics. The building in question is B40, which formerly housed the Centre Wallon de Biologie Industrielle (CWBI). This building is currently disused, but will be refurbished by ULiège. This building will house activities that cannot currently be carried out, or only with difficulty, in the respective Research Units of the Institute's researchers. 

1. ULiège organization chart

At ULiège, researchers are divided into Research Units (UR). The researchers involved in the Institute of Epidemics belong to different URs, spread over two campuses (Sart-Tilman and Gembloux Agro-Biotech). In order not to disrupt ULiège's organizational chart, it has been decided that researchers at the Institute of Epidemics will remain affiliated to their respective URs as a priority, but will be secondarily affiliated to the institute. They will pursue their usual activities in their URs, but will have an additional activity, oriented towards the fight against epidemics, within the institute. Under the aegis of the Institute of Epidemics, they will be responsible for anticipating epidemics and pandemics, and actively combating them should they occur.

2. Members

Any ULiège PI (principal investigator) is invited to become a member of the institute if he or she feels that his or her scientific skills could be useful in the fight against epidemics. The transdisciplinary aspect of the institute is indeed privileged. A list of current members is provided at the end of the document. An invitation to become a member (secondary affiliation) will be sent to all PIs via their UR director.

3. Dedicated building: B40

The ULiège rectoral authorities have decided to make a building available to the Institute of Epidemiology. The building in question is B40, which formerly housed the Centre Wallon de Biologie Industrielle (CWBI). This building is currently disused, but will be refurbished by ULiège. This building will house activities that cannot currently be carried out, or only with difficulty, in the respective research units of the institute's researchers. Building B40 will mainly house

• The handling of high-risk infectious agents, which requires access to
  BSL-3 safety laboratories and A3 animal facilities.
• The handling of lower-risk infectious agents (class 2, for example). Dedicated laboratories will be designed so that large-scale diagnostics and mass serology can be carried out with maximum efficiency (individual extraction modules, forward motion, etc.). In this context, the equipment acquired during the COVID-19 pandemic for large-scale RT-qPCR diagnostics will be reinstalled in the B40, as will the equipment used for mass serology tests.
• Standard laboratories, with no special safety requirements. These laboratories will be
  useful, among other things, for carrying out satellite manipulations.
• The large-scale equipment required, without creating competition between the institute and existing technology platforms. A dialogue will be set up very quickly with the managers of these platforms to ensure that requests for equipment from funding agencies do not overlap.
• A biobank generated by the institute's activities. We are talking here mainly about samples taken from people or animals suffering from infectious diseases. The preservation of this biobank will require the acquisition of dedicated freezers, which will be installed in the basement of the building. Those acquired during the COVID-19 pandemic will be installed there. The biobank will be set up in consultation with the BUHL (Biothèque Hospitalo-Universitaire de Liège) and in accordance with current regulations.
• Offices and meeting rooms. The B40 will be the venue for board meetings and discussions on joint projects. The offices will house researchers whose main activity will be located, either permanently or temporarily, in the B40.
  This structuring will enable the institute to fulfill its main missions, which, as a reminder, will be i) active epidemiological monitoring outside crisis periods, ii) identification of people or animals carrying the incriminating pathogen, as well as measurement of their post-infection and post-vaccination immune responses, during declared epidemics/pandemics, and iii) constitution of a biobank (library of infectious and non-infectious samples) accessible to all researchers in the field.

The various offices and laboratories will not be permanently allocated to any researcher, to allow maximum flexibility in the event of a health crisis. Indeed, these premises need to be able to be quickly and easily reallocated according to need. In the event of a pandemic, the premises must be able to be quickly converted into "crisis laboratories" for, for example, large-scale diagnostics or serological testing. A board will be set up to manage this flexibility and ensure optimum use of the premises. Outside crisis periods, this board will examine requests from researchers and allocate space according to scientific priorities, expressed needs and alignment with the institute's strategic objectives. During crises, this same board will play a central role in rapidly requisitioning and reallocating premises according to emergencies, thus guaranteeing a rapid and effective response.

4. Dedicated equipment

As mentioned above, the institute must not compete with existing technology platforms at ULiège. The institute's researchers are committed to using these platforms as a priority, and to contributing to their maintenance and expansion. Building B40 will therefore house only the equipment that is strictly necessary. This will include high-security laboratories and animal houses (BSL-3 and A3), as well as local equipment such as flow cytometers. The acquisition of this equipment will be carried out in consultation with the managers of the existing technology platforms. It is understood that the Institute's own equipment will be accessible to anyone who needs it, with the exception of crisis periods when the equipment will be exclusively dedicated to the fight against the current epidemic.

5. Dedicated personnel

If the B40 is to function properly, it will ideally need dedicated staff. The institute's founders are well aware of the difficulty of assigning staff. However, it is important to draw the authorities' attention to the human resources required, i.e. two logisticians or technicians and a business developer who would liaise with local companies. RISE could provide a solution for the latter.

6. Local and international roots

The Institut des Epidémies already has a strong international presence. Numerous collaborations exist in this field, including with other institutes or bodies whose objectives are similar to our own. These international relationships will be further strengthened to create a worldwide network of exchanges. At a local level, as mentioned above, the Institute will forge close links with the business world with the aim of:

1. help local companies active in the field to develop technological solutions to the challenges posed by epidemics, as well as
2. large-scale production of the solutions developed by the Institute's researchers. Finally, a dialogue will need to be established between the institute and the political authorities, so that the latter see the institute as an immediate partner in resolving health crises, whether human or animal. In this context, it will be necessary, for example, for the political world and regulatory bodies to agree that the institute can be granted approvals enabling it to implement diagnostic solutions, for example.

7. Cohesion

To ensure cohesion among the institute's members, thematic seminars will be organized in building B40. This is also where the various partners' value-adding activities will be discussed. For reasons of "non-disclosure", these activities are often kept relatively secret in the laboratories, resulting in numerous failures in attempts to bring products to market. Thanks to confidentiality agreements, the institute's researchers will be able to take advantage of the critical mass available to carry out their commercialization activities. RISE will also be involved in this process. Finally, COVID-19 taught us that the best cohesion between researchers occurs when they carry out a joint project with a strong societal impact. The institute will therefore initiate two or three large-scale projects, each involving as many researchers as possible. A case in point is the joint development of rapid response plans for future epidemics/pandemics.

8. Training and teaching activities

The Institute will offer postgraduate courses and training in the field of epidemic/pandemic control. The institute will also be active in training future Doctors of Science in the field.

9. Funding

The university has undertaken to pay for the renovation of building B40. The equipment, meanwhile, will be financed to the tune of five million euros by the ULiège laboratories that carried out PCR tests on behalf of the Belgian government during the COVID-19 pandemic. These budgets will most probably be insufficient. Additional support will therefore be sought from the regional political authorities. The sustainability of the structure will also be discussed with the academic and political authorities.

10. Scientific and administrative management

A director will be elected by the members. This person will be responsible for the administration of the institute (monitoring the creation of the institute, dialogue with academic and political authorities, space management, organization of meetings, supervision of joint projects, fund-raising, international relations, etc.). Governance decisions will be taken by a board chaired by the institute's director. Eventually, a restricted board will be created, but it has been decided that, for the first four years, the board will be made up of all members, so that everyone can give their opinion on the initial direction given to the Institute of Epidemics. An external board will also be set up to advise Institute members on the direction of their activities. All mandates will last four years.