The COLUMBUS project was presented for the first time at the 2015 Aquaculture Europe (AE2015) conference last month. The conference took place in Rotterdam from 21-23 October 2015, and highlighted many different and important aspects of aquaculture as the conference title suggested “Aquaculture, Nature and Society”.
The COLUMBUS project was presented by its project manager, Cliona Ní Cheallachain, to raise awareness of the project and its objectives. This presentation took place on the morning of Thursday 22 October in the Knowledge Management, Transfer and Extension Networks session. Following the presentation there was a robust discussion on the value of such an initiative with the end conclusion being that COLUMBUS achieving its objectives will surely result in positive impact for European Aquaculture.
The COLUMBUS project, a flagship European Union-funded Blue Growth initiative, directly responds to the EU’s demand that Europe needs to get more innovation out of its research, focusing on the marine and maritime aspects. It has successfully kicked-off recently and has moved into the first stages of managing knowledge and carrying-out Knowledge Transfer of marine research outputs to measurably increase their uptake and application by different end-users, such as industry, policy makers, and society in general.
AquaTT designed and wrote the proposal for COLUMBUS, and is the Strategic and Operational Leader of the project, as well as carrying out the project management and leadership of three work packages. For more information on COLUMBUS, please visit the project website (www.columbusproject.eu) or email its project manager Cliona Ní Cheallacháin (cliona@aquatt.ie).
