Core Technologies in Life Sciences (CTLS) 2016 Conference Summary.

From June 12 to 15, 2016, the second Core Technologies in Life Sciences (CTLS) conference was held at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. The CTLS grew out of a sense in the core facilities community that there was no single organization that could provide direct representation of all European core facility scientists. In April 2013, Spencer Shorte, the director of the Imagopole imaging platform at Institut Pasteur in Paris, hosted a meeting where numerous stakeholders from throughout Europe and beyond came together to discuss the possibility of forming a new organization to promote and support European core facility science. Presentations and discussions focused on what the attendees would like to see in a core facility association based in Europe. George Grills, Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) Executive Board member, spoke via teleconference, and from the start, connections between CTLS and ABRF were considered essential.