National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden
The National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden (NBIS) is a distributed national research infrastructure that provides bioinformatics and data science support to the Swedish life science research community. Hosted by Uppsala University, NBIS has been offering bioinformatics services since 2008[^c1]. The infrastructure employs more than 120 bioinformaticians, system developers, and data stewards distributed across six sites: Lund, Gothenburg, Linköping, Stockholm, Uppsala, and Umeå[^c2][^c20][^c24]. Twice a year, all NBIS staff gather from across Sweden for retreats that combine planning, workshops, and cross-site collaboration[^c30].
NBIS constitutes the SciLifeLab Bioinformatics platform and serves as the Swedish node in ELIXIR, the European infrastructure for biological information[^c3]. The organisation offers a broad spectrum of services including advanced bioinformatics analysis, bioimage informatics, data management, imaging AI support, AI and machine learning, systems and tools development, and support for national compute resources. NBIS also provides comprehensive training programmes, a PhD mentoring programme, and custom software development for the research community[^c4]. In 2026, NBIS expanded its AI and machine learning capacity by recruiting a Data Science lead and two permanent AI specialists under the Data-Driven Life Science program[^c20][^c21]. The system development team, organised into two Scrum teams, builds platforms for secure sharing of human genomic data and web applications for EU-funded research projects[^c22].
The infrastructure traces its origins to 2008 with the initiation of BILS (Bioinformatics Infrastructure for Life Sciences). WABI (Wallenberg Advanced Bioinformatics Infrastructure) was formed in 2012, and the two merged in 2016 to become NBIS[^c5]. The AIDA Data Hub and the BioImage Informatics Facility (BIIF) joined in 2021[^c6]. In 2026, BIIF expanded into 3D electron microscopy image analysis with a new staff scientist position funded through the DDLS program at the Umeå Centre for Electron Microscopy. NBIS is active in Nordic, European, and international collaborations, participating in multiple EU-funded projects including the European Genomic Data Infrastructure (GDI), Genome of Europe (GoE), Bigpicture, and EUCAIM[^c7]. Sweden is a founding member of ELIXIR, and NBIS constitutes the national node[^c8]. NBIS Director Bengt Persson participated in a panel at Almedalsveckan 2026 on Sweden's role in building Europe's genomics infrastructure[^c27].
In 2024, NBIS launched FEGA Sweden, the Swedish node of the Federated European Genome-phenome Archive, enabling secure sharing of sensitive human genomic data within a GDPR-compliant framework. A pilot project with the Swedish Childhood Tumour Biobank deposited 169 files (approximately 26 TB) as the first dataset[^c9][^c15]. In 2025, whole-genome sequencing data for 1,000 Swedish individuals from the SweGen study was added to the repository[^c17], and NBIS staff co-authored the Federated EGA marker paper in Nature Genetics describing the network's vision and achievements[^c18]. The Federated EGA network expanded to eight member countries following Canada's accession in 2024 as the first non-European node[^c19]. In 2025, the AIDA Data Hub launched its Data Science Platform, Sweden's first secure platform combining long-term primary storage with AI compute for data-driven precision health research[^c28].
In 2024, NBIS reported a total income of approximately 142 million SEK[^c12]. The infrastructure supported 245 active projects involving 257 principal investigators and produced 100 publications from direct project support[^c13][^c14]. The ALASCCA clinical trial, whose data analysis system was established by NBIS bioinformatician Markus Mayrhofer, was ranked the 6th most important research news of 2025 by Dagens Medicin[^c29]. NBIS is supported by the Swedish Research Council, Science for Life Laboratory, major Swedish universities, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, NordForsk, and the European Commission[^c11]. The NAISS Arrhenius supercomputer—the first Swedish node in the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking infrastructure—began installation in December 2025 and opened for general use in June 2026, providing substantially expanded compute capacity for Swedish life science researchers[^c23].