ERA-MBT Workshop on collaboration opportunities

A noon to noon workshop with the coordinators/leaders of a selected group of project leaders of various European Bioeconomy projects and networks was held from 8 to 9 September 2015 in Berlin, Germany, back to back with the PLATFORM Annual Event 2015.

The aim of the workshop was to identify potential overlaps in research topics/goals and explore opportunities for collaboration. Being in the second year of its operational phase, ERA-MBT is actively seeking complementarities between national activities to further support the development of European marine biotechnology. Following activities are high on the priority list and proved to be of interest to other networks:

• Launching thematic calls to generate joint European research and development activities.
• Arranging stakeholder events to promote dialogue between science, industry and policy and identifying requirements for successful developments within the area.
• Developing a perspective on the future of marine biotechnology research and development and its likely impacts.
• Providing information about biotechnology in an online and open access portal with a wiki function.

During this workshop, ERA-MBT explored common interests with other networks which could lead to future collaborations. The goal of the workshop was to find at least one concrete action between at least two of the 13 networks and projects that were present at the meeting (ERA-MBT, ERA-PLATFORM, ERA-NET SUSFOOD, FACCE SURPLUS, ERA-SysAPP, IraSME, JPI Oceans, EMBRIC, FACCE JPI, ERA-Bioenergy, ERASynBio, ERA-ib2, EEN).

The workshop was highly successful as the project/network representatives identified a long list of potential common activities. Moreover, 4 concrete collaborative actions with an accompanying action plan were developed in following themes:

• Capacity building – Tech Transfer – Knowledge Transfer
• Consultation of Stakeholders – Strategic input
• Scientific conferences – Showcases
• Harmonization – joint time lines

A summary of the workshop has been presented by Inge Arents, IWT (Belgium) and Petra Schulte, PtJ (Germany) at the PLATFORM Annual Event 2015 on 10 September.

A detailed report will be published later in autumn.

Find here a selection of pictures of the event.