Transfiere 2022

Transfiere 2022

Transfiere is the biggest professional and multi-sectoral forum for knowledge and technology transfer in Spain, and the 2022 edition took place in Malaga from 16–17 February. As with every year, the famous forum gathered the most relevant players in the national and international fields of Research, Development and Innovation.

LifeWatch ERIC is a prominent player in these fields, as a developer of innovative technologies such as LifeBlock and Tesseract, which are helping to revolutionise biodiversity and ecosystem research and advance society’s progress towards achieving important goals such as the SDGs. It is only natural, then, that the research infrastructure was among the 600+ entities represented and among the 96 exhibition stands present at the forum. LifeWatch ERIC has a long-held tradition of attending Transfiere in order to raise awareness of the infrastructure, and to take the opportunity to network and forge new connections with a variety of stakeholders, as well as to promote its work on ERDF projects in the territory, such as SUMHAL.

The LifeWatch ERIC team –including Chief Technology Officer Juan Miguel González-Aranda and Procurement & Institutional Relationship Officer Javier López-Torres– was on hand to welcome the Transfiere 2022 attendants to the stand, which also had a large area for informal meetings to take place. Among the visitors to the stand were Juan Carlos Álvarez Martín and Amós García Hueso, Managing Director and Secretary General of the Andalusian Agricultural and Fisheries Management Agency, Lourdes Fuster and Vicente Pérez, President and Secretary General of the Andalusian Institute for Research and Training in Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and Organic Production (IFAPA), as well as Andrés Alcántara and Antonio Troya from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) – for more information on this last meeting, see here.

LifeWatch ERIC in round table: “A Preview of the Role of Science at the EU-Africa Summit 2022”

EU-Africa Summit 2022

On 8–9 December 2021, AERAP Science (the Africa-Europe Science and Innovation Platform) hosted the round-table session “A preview on the Role of Science at the EU-Africa Summit 2022”, to consider the contribution of science to the priorities for the EU-Africa Summit on 17–18 February 2022 in Brussels. In his contribution, Dr Juan Miguel González-Aranda, LifeWatch ERIC CTO and ERIC Forum Executive Board Member, addressed the necessity of establishing an EU-AFRICA e-Biodiversity network, in order to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals regarding the sustainable provision of ecosystem services.

For more information on this event, please see the AERAP article.

Full participant list:

Orla Feely – Vice President for Research, Innovation & Impact (VPRII), University College Dublin, Ireland

Erik Hansalek – Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany

Racey Muchilwa – Head of Novartis, Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), Novartis, Kenya

Daan du Toit – Deputy Director-General: ICR, Department of Science and Innovation, South Africa

Maria Cristina Russo – Director for Global Approach and International Cooperation in R&I at European Commission, European Commission, Belgium

Mahama Ouedraogo – Director, Science and Technology Department, African Union Commission, Ethiopia

Shamila Nair-Bedouelle – Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences, UNESCO, France

Jean-Pierre Bourguignon – Institut des hautes études scientifiques (IHES), France

Juan Miguel González-Aranda – LifeWatch ERIC Chief Technology Officer & ERIC FORUM Executive Board Member

Michael Makanga – Director, European Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), Netherlands

Raham Rachdi – USPA, Paris

Rahel Belete – Kilimanjaro Innovation Hub, Ethiopia

Djime Adoum – Director General, Sahel Coalition, Chad

Bernd Halling – Head of Corporate Strategy, Bayer AG

Intisar Soghayroun – Minister, Ministry of Higher education and Scientific Research, Sudan

Space4Climate Action: LifeWatch ERIC at the World Space Forum

Space4Climate Action

Yesterday, during the second day of the 2021 World Space Forum “Space4Climate Action” organised by UNOOSA (the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs), LifeWatch ERIC CTO, Dr Juan Miguel González-Aranda, presented “Towards the establishment of a global e-Biodiversity network for Sustainable Development Goal accomplishment and Ecosystem Services provision”. Dr González-Aranda highlighted that humanity is bringing our life support system, the biosphere, to the point of collapse, proposing that to solve this situation we must deepen our current level of knowledge, move beyond the present fragmentation of science, and foster greater complementarity and synergy between disciplines. One of the ways to do this being the development of new trans-disciplinary paradigms and the building of synthetic knowledge, with the aim of boosting innovation and a great involvement of young scientists and civil society.

LifeWatch ERIC is Europe’s first line of response to the biodiversity emergency, applying state-of-the-art ICT (Remote Sensing, Big Data, HPC-Cloud-Edge Computing, Blockchain, AI-Machine Learning, IoT-Sensor Networks, etc.) and services to scientific Communities-of-Practice and research centres all over the world through its distributed e-Infrastructure. It engages with and interconnects Researchers, Technologists, Decision-makers, Environmental Managers, Companies, Entrepreneurs, and Citizen Scientists, helping these stakeholders to develop their activities into Virtual Research Environments (VREs). This demonstrates the added value which ICT brings to battling “The Big Five” significant causes of biodiversity loss (changing use of sea and land, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution and invasive non-native species), contributing significantly to the introduction of the appropriate measures to combat them. LifeWatch ERIC is particularly involved, for instance, in Aichi Target 9, regarding Non-indigenous and Invasive species.

These activities are being carried out in synergy with the UN SDGs (in particular, 15: Life on Land and 14: Life on Water), the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, the European Green Deal, and many more. This is in addition to the essential role of the forthcoming Global Europe instrument (as often cited in ongoing EU-CELAC and EU-African Union cooperation) in relation to indigenous knowledge. The recognition of the importance of indigenous knowledge in reversing biodiversity loss is further reflected in the recent creation of IKRI (the Indigenous Knowledge Research Infrastructure) where key outcomes are anticipated in cooperation with prominent stakeholders, including UNOOSA, ITU (The UN International Telecommunications Union) and LifeWatch ERIC.

You can see the full programme here.

LifeWatch ERIC Takes the Baton: Final Meeting of LIFE AdaptaMED Project

LIFE Adaptmed

On Thursday 19 November, LifeWatch ERIC CTO, Dr Juan Miguel González-Aranda, delivered a keynote speech a the Adaptamed Symposium in Málaga, which marked the end of the LIFE Adaptamed project. His speeh was entitled “LifeWatch ERIC in a nutshell”, and showed the main goals and e-services provided by LifeWatch ERIC in the context of the ENVRI cluster. The presentation took place during the session named “New technologies for monitoring – ecosystem management and visualisation” together with Dr Regino Zamora, Professor of Ecology from Granada University, Dr Antonio Ortiz, from the Water and Environment Agency of Junta de Andalusia (AMAYA), chaired by Dr Francisco-Javier Cano-Manuel, Chief of the Environmental Management Department of Junta de Andalusia in Granada.

The LIFE Adaptamed Project has as main goal obtaining recommendations for the protection of Ecosystem Services in the Mediterranean area. These recommendations would be carried out through the development of adaptive management actions, focusing on the goods and services provided by their natural spaces: for example, those addressed to soil protection, the regulation of water resources and climate itself, the prevention of desertification, the maintenance of fundamental ecological functions to favour the self-organisation of ecosystems (e.g., pollination or seed dispersal), in a global climate change scenario in which socio-economics impacts should also be taken into consideration.

You can watch the recording of the event here (in Spanish). For Dr González-Aranda’s presentation, skip to 7:03:00.

COP26: A New Hope? – LifeWatch ERIC CTO in Lecture Series on Climate Change

cumbre del clima COP26
An expert-led Lecture Series on the topic of Climate Change (La cumbre del clima COP26: ¿Una nueva esperanza?) is taking place at the University of Navarra, in light of COP26, which came to a close last week.

The Conference brought together representatives from many countries with a common goal: to implement measures to reduce global temperature below 1.5 ºC compared to pre-industrial levels, in a bid to reduce the negative effects of climate change. The aim of the Lecture Series is to present a multidisciplinary exploration of this topic, touching on themes of biodiversity, circular economy, ecology, energy sources or sustainable building, hearing from a range of topic-specific experts.

One of these such experts was LifeWatch ERIC’s own Juan Miguel González-Aranda, Chief Technology Officer and ICT-Core Director, who was called on to present on Sustainable Development Goal 15 Life on Earth. The lecture took place on 12 November 2021 with an in-person audience at the University of Navarra, as well as being livestreamed on YouTube.

His lecture followed the following structure, and was followed by a Q&A session with the audience:

Part 1: Approaching ecosystem services in the context of climate change

Part 2: e-pan-European distributed research infrastructures to strengthen communities working in the realms of science, technology and innovation 

Part 3: Let’s be FAIR: Addressing the challenges of the heterogeneity and scale of biodiversity data, and providing ecosystem services in a sustainable manner through the use of disruptive ICT

Part 4: Tesseract and LifeBlock (tools developed by LifeWatch ERIC)

Part 5: Conclusions

The full PowerPoint presentation (in Spanish) can be downloaded here.

You can watch the full lecture here (in Spanish).

Celebrating European Researchers’ Night 2021

European Researchers' Night 2021

Friday 24 September marked the 2021 edition of European Researchers’ Night (ERN), the Europe-wide event which takes place every year on the last Friday of September. The aim of the initiative is to bring research and researchers closer to the public, displaying the diversity of science and its impact on citizens’ daily lives.

The LifeWatch ERIC Common Facility in Spain celebrated the occasion by taking part in ERN Seville (Spain), setting up its own designated area in the Plaza de San Francisco. Here it presented the SUMHAL Project (Sustainability for Mediterranean Hotspots in Andalusia integrating LifeWatch ERIC), which is supported by the European Regional Development Fund. The core objective of this project is biodiversity conservation in sustainable natural/semi-natural systems of the Western Mediterranean, using high-tech infrastructures. Speakers included Christos Arvanitidis, LifeWatch ERIC CEO, Margarita Paneque, National Research Council of Spain and Delegate for Andalusia and Extremadura, and Juan Miguel González-Aranda, LifeWatch ERIC CTO and ICT-Core Director, in the left-hand photo above.

In Portugal, on the other hand, ERN2021 saw activities taking place in 20 cities, with the active involvement of PORBIOTA, which coordinates LifeWatch Portugal. The Researchers for European Green Growth and Education Consortium, coordinated by the Ciência Viva Agency, together with the Institute for Research & Innovation in Health and the Institute of Chemical and Biological Technology ‘António Xavier’, mobilised 18 science centres, which promoted 78 build-up activities and over 100 activities. Altogether, around 7000 participants of all ages were engaged in the programme.
In turn, Science for Climate, coordinated by the Portuguese National Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Lisbon, brought together the Universities of Minho, Coimbra and Évora, the University Institute of Lisbon, the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, the Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies, and the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory. The partners, several of which belong to PORBIOTA, promoted 7 build-up activities, including a bioblitz, and an open day for school groups, which set up 13 activities in various scientific fields. In addition, an online programme with 90 different activities was promoted, and on the 24 September, an onsite programme with 156 activities took place in Évora, Lisbon, Coimbra and Braga, mobilising a total of 4581 participants. The right-hand photo shows the open night at the Portuguese National Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Lisbon.

Life below Water and Life on Land

LifeWatch ERIC Session UNGA76

On 1 October 2021, LifeWatch ERIC had the privilege of convening a session of the 76th UN General Assembly Science Summit*, dedicated to SDG 14, Life below Water, and SDG 15, Life on Land. LifeWatch ERIC CEO, Christos Arvanitidis, and CTO, Juan Miguel González-Aranda, convened the event, which featured experts from all over the world, speaking in keynotes and sessions. An interdisciplinary and cross-domain approach is crucial to achieve the SDGs by 2030, and this was reflected in the choice of speakers: policymakers, researchers, doctors and social scientists, whose range of perspectives and expertise was well-received by the audience.

After the introduction, the first topic of discussion was on SDG 14, Life below Water, then on SDG 15, Life on Land, before moving on to examine approaches key to the achievement of the 2030 SDGs, such as strengthening international collaboration, pursuing transdisciplinary approaches and modes of capacity building. Recurrent hot topics included the increased use of e-Biodiversity tools, in particular remote observation, in fighting the biodiversity crisis, along with indigenous knowledge. Finally, speakers pondered issues to tackle at UNGA77 in September 2022 and opened up the floor to participants, who brought yet more unique perspectives to the table.

CTO Juan Miguel González-Aranda summarised his main takeaways from the event:

“Integrating e-Biodiversity and sustainable ecosystem management makes us stronger. Goals 14 and 15, along with all the SDGs, can be accomplished when we base our efforts on scientific evidence, FAIR data and FAIR services. We must work hand-in-hand across sectors, without leaving anyone behind, integrating indigenous knowledge into our approach and following the motto thinking globally, acting locally. Finally, we must be conscious that data by itself is not enough; it must be transformed into information, evidence, knowledge and innovation, combining the outcomes of both Green and Digital Agendas in order to create tangible Green Products together.”

Click here to watch the full session on YouTube.

*Coordinated and moderated by ISC, the UNGA76 Science Summit is taking place from 14 September – 14 October, its central aim being to raise awareness of the role and contribution of science to the attainment of the SDGs. Please see our previous news item for more information.

Speakers in order of first appearance:

Mr Declan Kirrane SSUNGA76 Organiser

Dr Christos Arvanitidis LifeWatch ERIC CEO

Ms Jyoti Mathur-Filipp Director of the Implementation and Support Division at the UN Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Canada

Dr Ciara Leonard University College Dublin, Public Affairs Manager, UCD Research and Innovation; Moderator, Ireland

Dr Alberto Basset Interim Director of Service Centre, LifeWatch ERIC, Lecce, Italy

Dr Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo University Pablo de Olavide, Seville, LifeWatch Spain

Mr Michel Massart DEFIS, European Commission, Belgium

Dr Peter Heffernan UN Oceans Ambassador; Member, EU Mission Board: ‘Healthy Oceans, Seas, Coastal & Inland Waters’ Ireland

Prof. Mike Elliott University of Hull, UK

Dr Stephanie Splett Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Germany

Prof. Eric Ruuth Scientific Coordinator, IMIBIO, Argentina

Ms Inmaculada Figueroa EU-LAC ResInfra: Towards a new EU-LAC partnership in Research Infrastructures. LifEuLAC pilot

Prof. Javier Castroviejo-Bolívar Amigos de Doñana, Spain

Prof. Antonio Micha Director-General of the National Institute for Environmental Conservation INCOMA, Malabo, Equatorial Guinea 

Dr Shirish Ravan Head, Beijing Office, The United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER) Programme of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) Vienna, Austria

Dr Juan Miguel González-Aranda LifeWatch ERIC CTO, ICT Core Director and ERIC Forum Executive Board Member

Mr Stephen Peedell Knowledge for Sustainable Development and Food Security, Joint Research Centre European Commission, Belgium

Prof. Vladislav Popov Agriculture University of Plovdiv, LifeWatch Bulgaria

Dr José Manuel Ávila-Castuera LifeWatch ERIC AgroEcology Officer

Patrick Worms, the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry CIFOR-ICRAF

Ms Africa Zanella, Director Centre for Sustainability and Gender Economics (CSGE), Australia-Spain

Dr Milind Pimprika Founder and Chairman CANEUS International, Centre for Large Space Structures and Systems

Dr Murray Hitzman iCRAG, Ireland

Dr Akhilesh Gupta Senior Adviser, Policy Coordination and Programme Management Division Dept of Science and Technology, India

Dr Lino Barañao Argentina

Kurt Zatloukal Medical University of Graz

LifeWatch ERIC at Greencities Forum & Smart Agrifood Summit, Málaga

FYCMA Malaga

At the turn of last month, several LifeWatch ERIC members made their way to Málaga for two important events at the Trade Fairs & Congress Centre of Málaga (FYCMA): the Greencities Forum and the Smart Agrifood Summit.

Greencities Forum

The twelfth edition of the Greencities Forum took place from 29 – 30 September and attracted more than 2,600 visitors: professionals, institutions and public administrations with a focus on sustainability and smart city planning. The organisations represented at the event brought together a comprehensive proposal of solutions, services and tools aimed at improving the habitability of urban environments, to make them more sustainable, innovative and connected places to live in.

LifeWatch ERIC was one of the brokers of the event, and executive board members, Christos Arvanitidis, CEO, and Juan Miguel González-Aranda, CTO, were honoured to welcome the mayor of Málaga, Francisco de la Torre, deputy mayor of Málaga, Susana Carillo, and Secretary-General for Innovation from Junta de Andalusia, Pablo Cortés-Achedad, to the LifeWatch ERIC exposition stand. In fact, Málaga is the perfect host city for the event, having recently submitted its candidacy for the European Capital of Innovation Award.

You can read the official closing press release of the event here (in Spanish).

Smart Agrifood Summit

The fourth edition of the Smart Agrifood Summit took place from 30 September – 1 October, featuring over 1,600 professionals from 32 countries. It is described as an international reference event in the agrifood sector and is a face-to-face and virtual meeting point to find partners, increase financing and internationalisation channels as well as publicise new products, services and innovative projects.

Representing LifeWatch ERIC were Christos Arvanitidis (CEO), Juan Miguel González-Aranda (CTO) and Lucas de Moncuit (CFO); LifeWatch ERIC had its own exposition stand in the conference hall, where staff members were happy to welcome the General Manager of Agency of Management for Agriculture and Fisheries of Andalucia (AGAPA), Jose Carlos Alvarez, and Vanessa Bernad from Junta de Andalucía. During the Summit, LifeWatch ERIC promoted the Smartfood project (an ERDF Andalusia Project) through speeches at a dedicated round table and the AgriTalks Forum, and held productive meetings with the project’s partners.

You can read the official closing press release of the event here (in Spanish).

Inmaculada Figueroa, new Chair of LifeWatch ERIC General Assembly

Inmaculada Figueroa: Chair

LifeWatch ERIC is pleased to announce the election of Inmaculada Figueroa as the new Chair of the LifeWatch ERIC General Assembly for the next two years.

“I have been involved with LifeWatch since the early stages of its creation and hosting in Spain and with the General Assembly since its establishment as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium in 2017, and I am delighted to have been elected as Chair of this strategic infrastructure in such a crucial moment, with LifeWatch ERIC closing its first term and setting its sights on upcoming the challenges presented by the next one. After 5 years of groundwork building the tools and web-services required, LifeWatch ERIC is in a position to boost its contribution to civil society, in supporting the European Union in reaching the 2030 Green Deal Biodiversity Targets and the UN SDGs,” says Inmaculada Figueroa; “As much as I am looking forward to getting started, I would first like to extend my thanks and congratulations to my predecessor for the brilliant work he has done for the infrastructure, Gert Verreet. I would also like to take a moment to remember Marc R. De Jonge, who also chaired the LifeWatch ERIC General Assembly until his untimely passing on 27 April 2019.”

Inmaculada is an electrical engineer with more than 17 years’ experience in the Space domain (Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial), being responsible for the Assembly and integration of scientific satellite payloads. Since 2009, she has been working in the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain and its predecessors in the field of Research Infrastructures and e-Infrastructures. Currently, she is the Deputy Vice Director General for Internationalization of Science & Innovation in the Spanish Ministry of Science & Innovation and ESFRI Vice Chair.

The LifeWatch ERIC Executive Board and all the staff warmly welcome Inmaculada and wish her the best for her new position.

The LifeWatch ERIC General Assembly

The LifeWatch ERIC General Assembly is the highest governing body of LifeWatch ERIC and is responsible for the overall direction and supervision of the infrastructure. The members of the LifeWatch ERIC General Assembly are:       

Inmaculada Figueroa (Chair, ES); Gert Verreet, Aline Van der Werf, Jerome Degreef (Belgium); Georgios Kotoulas, Eva Chatzinicolaou (GR); Grazia Pavoncello (IT), Joana Pinheiro, Pedro Beja, Rui Figueira (PT); Viorel Vulturescu (RO); Luboš Halada (SK), Albin Kralj (SI), Maria Teresa Serrano, Alejandro Rodríguez, José Juan Sánchez (ES); Edwin van Huis, Marjolein Robijn, as well as the members of the LifeWatch ERIC Executive Board: Christos Arvanitidis (CEO), Juan Miguel González-Aranda (CTO), Alberto Basset (Service Centre Director), Peter Van Tienderen (Interim Director of VLab & Innovation Centre) and Lucas de Moncuit (CFO).

LifeWatch ERIC receives Sustainability Award

Sustainability Award

On 28 May, Fundación Ingenio, an initiative bringing together the main stakeholders of the agricultural sector in Murcia (Spain), presented LifeWatch ERIC with its Environmental Sustainability Award, as further recognition of the work it does in support of sustainable ecosystem management.

LifeWatch ERIC CTO, Juan Miguel González-Aranda, accepted the award from the President of Murcia, Fernando López Miras, along with the Regional Minister of this area, Antonio Luengo Zapata. Christos Arvanitidis, LifeWatch CEO, sent a video message expressing his thanks, followed by a short speech from Juan Miguel González-Aranda emphasising the importance of fostering sustainable agroecosystems, in synergy with the EU Green Deal, SDG 2030, and the European AgroEcology Network, among other outstanding initiatives.

In addition, LifeWatch ERIC also participated in the radio programme “A vivir Tierra y Mar” with Radio Cadena SER.

LifeWatch ERIC would like to extend its congratulations to the other Environmental Sustainability Award winners: Cáritas Diocesanas for their efforts in supporting disadvantaged and deprived groups, and a family from the Campo de Cartagena area which boasts three generations of farmers.