On 11 November 2015, the European Commission held its annual Oceans of Tomorrow conference in Brussels, Belgium. The meeting, aptly named “results so far for healthy and productive seas and oceans”, showcased the key exploitable results that have been generated by the projects funded under the call.
The meeting was chaired by Ms Sigi Gruber, Head of the Marine Resources Unit of DG Research and Innovation. As part of the opening plenary presentation, Ms Gruber highlighted the importance of increasing the communication, dissemination and, critically, Knowledge Transfer of all results from EC-funded research. In particular, she spoke of the Marine Information Sharing Platform that the EC are planning to set up by the end of the year (2015). This Platform will appear as an extension of CORDIS and will present Knowledge Outputs of EC-funded projects in an easy-to-access portal. To facilitate this plan, the EC collaborated with the COLUMBUS project (March 2015 – February 2018) whose key objective is to identify, collect and transfer marine Knowledge Outputs to stimulate increased uptake and impact.
Over the last few months, COLUMBUS has been fortunate enough to work with all 31 Project Coordinators of the Oceans of Tomorrow projects. This has enabled over 500 Knowledge Outputs to be identified and described; where a Knowledge Output is a single “unit of knowledge or learning generated by or through research activity”. The sheer volume collected highlights the huge potential of additional impact that could be generated through Knowledge Transfer processes.
COLUMBUS would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all the Project Coordinators for their patience and collaboration. The Coordinators should expect to observe the benefit of this collaboration with increased exposure of their results in a more digestible format. Furthermore, the COLUMBUS Knowledge Fellows should be congratulated for carrying out this immense task with professionalism and enthusiasm.
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).
