On 6-7 June 2023, the projects of the two first calls of BlueBio finally met in person in Lisbon, Portugal. Both the 19 projects from the cofunded call, kicked-off in 2020 and the 10 projects from the 1st Additional Call kicked-off in 2022 have only met online, so this in-person in Lisbon was their first chance of meeting.
Gathered in Lisbon were project coordinators and representatives from the 29 projects doing their end-term or mid-term evaluation, the 14 independent evaluators who had conducted evaluations and representatives from the 30 partners of the BlueBio consortium.
BlueBio group photo, Lisbon, June 2023
The coordinator of BlueBio, Ingeborg Korme (RCN), opened the event with a presentation of what BlueBio has achieved and looked into the future of the cofund. There is still a year left of the ERA-Net and still possibilities for impact, while the partners are preparing for handing over the responsibilities to the new European initiatives.
In two parallel sessions, the coordinators presented their projects, received input from the evaluators and discussed the final work of the project. After two interesting session of presentations, the participants spent a few hours at the Oceanarium, the exemplary aquarium in Lisbon. The conference dinner was of course also blue and biobased, a bacalhau (codfish) delight.
The second day BlueBio held a workshop on findig concrete examples of impact on the six strategic areas of BlueBio. Then there were presentations on ethics, human capacity building, communication and the work done on synergies between projects. The recently published Research Agenda on the Blue Bioeconomy was also presented.
Siri Granum Carson (director, NTNU Ocean), Helen Vieira (Mission Ocean board) and Mariana Doria (Algae4Future) joined Ingeborg Korme (BlueBio) for a panel on the challenges in the blue bioeconomy value chains, looking into the future of the blue bioeconomy.
During the event, there was a training on human capacity building by CNR (Italy) for the 10 projects conducting their mid-term evaluation. BlueBio has seen from earlier work that a training and reminder on incorporating capacity building in the projects is very effective when the projects are nearing their mid-way point.
BlueBio panel on challenges in blue bioeconomy value chains
As the 19 cofunded call projects are doing the last work and finishing their final reports, BlueBio is supporting 10 projects finishing their mid-term evaluation, 7 projects who were kicked-off this winter and are happy to finalise signing contracts with the projects funded in the 3rd Additional Call. The ERA-Net Cofund will finish on 31 May 2024, but the funded projects will continue. The most important task is now to ensure the success of the projects and the maximised impact of both the projects and the consortium.