The Global Microbial Identifier network currently consists of people who have attended the previous meetings in Bruxelles (September 2011), Washington (March 2012), Washington (September 2012), Copenhagen (February 2013), California (September 2013), York (September 2014), Beijing (May 2015), Rome (May 2016), Mexico (May 2017) and Geneva (May 2018).
The Global Microbial Identifier Network consists of approximately 260 experts members from 50 countries, including clinical-, food-, and public health microbiologists and virologists, bio-informaticians, epidemiologists, representatives from funding agencies, data hosting systems, and policy makers from academia, public health, industry, governments.
The Initiative was started in September 2011 at the first meeting convened in Bruxelles. This could also be seen as a follow-up to a EU pilot project (GESTURE) exploring the potential for global sharing of sequence data.
Since then a biennial sequence of meetings have been initiated. At the third meeting in Bethesda, September 2012 an interim Project Steering Committee composed of leaders from five countries was established.This Project Steering Committee has guided the development and implementation of a strategic plan and has set up a range of working groups to initiate specific work tasks.
To ensure involvement and progress in the GMI initiative, we ask everybody, who wishes to participate as an active member in one or more working groups to accept the charter and sign up for membership.
Become a member of GMIGMI envisions a global system of DNA genome databases for microbial and infectious disease identification and diagnostics. Such a system will benefit those tackling individual problems at the frontline, clinicians, veterinarian, etc., as well as policy-makers, regulators, and industry.
By enabling access to this global resource, a professional response on health threats will be within reach of all countries with basic laboratory infrastructure.
