On 6 February 2018, Merlijn van Rijswijk was added to the Board of the DTL Projects Foundation, responsible for the financial organisation as well as project organisation. Van Rijswijk will also help set up new strategic projects.

Within the framework of the DTL network, a separate projects organisation supports collaborative projects that fit the scope of DTL. This DTL Projects Foundation (in short: DTL Projects) offers a formalised structure to establish collaborative multi-party projects. DTL Projects can be used as a vehicle to jointly respond to calls of national and European funding programmes on behalf of a group of organisations within the DTL network. For instance, seven DTL partners participate as ‘Linked Third Party’ under the umbrella of DTL Projects in the EXCELERATE project (an H2020 project that connects European ELIXIR nodes). This construct can also be advantageous in other international projects, because the number of participants per country often is a limiting factor. Read more about DTL Projects.
Ruben Kok (DTL Director): “We are very happy to have Merlijn ‘on Board’ as a first step in strengthening the Board of DTL Projects. We will work on next steps now to find suitable further candidates in the Board who can help us steer DTL Projects into an active projects organisation, making use of the power of the original and existing partnership with a wide range of organisations.”