Live from the MCAA Annual Conference (Saturday, March 26th)

Welcome to day 1 of our Annual Conference! Follow along with today’s updates right here on our live blog and on Twitter following the hashtag #MCAACONF2022.

*** This live blog is updated on March 26th during the Conference by the Communications Working Group, you can find their bios and the end of this post. Sessions appear in reverse chronological order***

Digital poster session

A great digital Poster session concluded the Day 1 of the MCAA, now, only the dinner and the Award ceremony is missing from the program!

The sessions were packed, and a huge variety of topics were covered, ranging from Social Sciences, Engineering, Economics & Environmental sciences, to Life Sciences, Chemistry & Physics, and Humanities & Socially Responsible Behaviour.

In this section, you will read the Live blogging of the Second 4 parallel sessions.

Parallel Session 5 — Tackling major policy issues at European level with learned societies
Parallel Session 6 — Next generation and VR assisted research, training and networking tools and their application potential
Parallel Session 7 — Communication & Engagement within Hybrid Working Environment
Parallel Session 8 — Mentoring opportunities for MCAA members

Parallel Session 5 — Tackling major policy issues at European level with learned societies

Moderator: Marco Masia — Initiative for Science in Europe
Martin Andler — President, Initiative for Science in Europe

Martin Andler: when some decision is made in Brussels, we need to be vocal about it. If we have to be heard, then we have to say something.
When scientists get together in the right way, they can be heard at the
European level and right decisions can be made.
Marco Masia: We need a system to reward and incentivize people who are
participating in this transition towards open science.

Impact of covid-19 on the young researchers:
Martin Andler: If we do not provide necessary general conditions, there will be a loss of a generation of scientists that are impacted by the lack of necessary conditions.
During this Covid-19 time, there was no access to the labs for some period of time for the young generation doing the experiments, especially women are negatively impacted during this crisis. We were not successful in securing additional funds at the European level for the Marie curie fellows but only the extension of the grant time.
The main lesson from this work was we need to communicate better to the society that the lack of access to the research labs for the young researchers
have much more impact than normal work places.
Though the pandemic hit not only the young researchers but the whole
society, the impacts of this will not only on the young researchers’ careers
but also on the society. We need to communicate this to society and the
European institutions.

Someone in the audience: Identifying the issues is the first step to addressing them. If we identify the blockages in the system and put in the right incentives, we could attract more participation and the cost of addressing the “brain drain” will not be huge. In the end, the system will be transformed in the right direction. To solve the “brain drain” problem, European grants are not enough but need local support too in the form of attractive grants otherwise the support provided in these 2–3 years will be in vain.

Having lots of money will need not result in a value. If there is no structure in the system to address the problems, even the presence of a large talent pool is vain.

Panel discussion:
Q: How do we address the people’s theory on spending energy on the work to result in high-quality publications is more important than advocating or working for the policy related tasks?
Marco Masia: There is always an excuse. If you are really interested in doing
something, you should do it. It is a bit of time management and planning the
priorities. If you are interested in Science policy, you should work on it as a
volunteer through societies like MCAA. Nowadays, doctoral schools and institutions encourage students to develop these kinds of important competencies.

Parallel Session 6 — Next generation and VR assisted research, training and networking tools and their application potential

Damjana Kastelic, Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) / Head of Training and Academic office / Barcelona, Spain
Nikoletta Zampeta Legaki, Tampere University / Senior Researcher
Jonas Krebs, Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) / Scientific Project Manager

The session started by addressing two questions to the audience. The first one was what did the public associate VR with? The public mentioned: digital, future, education, 360, metaverse, gaming, science fiction. The second question was who was using or used VR? There were three raised hands.

One VR has been brought to the session and lots of recorded videos of how VR works and is used were presented during the three talks.

We are in the fourth technology wave. VR has been boosted by the pandemic and it is being used already in many industries.

VR vs AR vs MR, all referred to as extended reality (XR):

• VR is Virtual Reality, everything we see is digital.
• AR is Augmented Reality, an overlay on top of the real world, e.g., a reconstructed building in a museum.
• MR is Mixed Reality, a hybrid of both.

VR in collaborative meetings

Why use VR for meetings?

• Increased “presence”
• Spatial audio (mimics the voice situation)
• Highly customised environments
• Interaction with 3D objects
• Sustainability and global collaborations

Other points discussed:

• An example of VR for meetings is in an ITN, namely PROTrEIN. VR is used to train proteomics researchers, this being a purely computational network. They bought the VR equipment for the entire consortium, which allowed them to create a great emotional feeling and mimic the real situation meetings. The goal was to meet and discuss presentations in a VR environment.
• Spatial, another VR tool, allows to import 3D objects and has many more customisation options, e.g., import pdf, combine tools, import posters, visualisation of DNA and protein structures.
• Someone can always connect through the desktop, an option for people that suffer from sickness.

VR in training activities

• Given the pandemic, ESRs needed to be trained
• Hospitals have priority to use technologies such as proteomics, flow cytometry etc, and the space is small, but they needed to make sure of the training
• 50% carbon imprint just by running the facilities
• They provide training on cutting edge technologies in Barcelona. With the pandemic, a solution was needed for the continuation of the training for the external researchers
• Virtual “hands-on” training courses, from chemistry, molecular biology, new generation sequencing, e.g., how to do a qPCR is possible by using VR
• Virtual lab visits with interactive content by scanning the lab in 360 format
• Such a VR lab was used for the selection of the PhD students
• VR is a great tool for teaching, e.g., molecular mechanisms
• Augmented reality was shown as well: import another object but seeing the space as it is
• Haptic gloves in the wet lab, e.g., for splitting the cells, adding trypsin etc., VR allows to use sensors that create resistance

Advantages of VR:

• Enhances creativity
• Avoidance of dangerous environments and toxic chemicals
• Reduction of consumables, material and production costs
• Global collaboration
• Sustainability aspects

VR in research

• Several applications and research projects that use VR were briefly presented.
• Protein engineering and drug design, e.g., looking at the enzymatic pockets
• A game to engage users in climate change
• A study for the relationship between humans and forests and the interaction between the two
• Get design ideas from the forest to implement different environments
• The relationship between VR and wearables to increase the immersion and introduce new ways to interact in VR
• How audio can affect VR, regarding both gaming and therapy
• Representation of the data in different ways in VR using various visual approaches including using the senses
• Development of new emotion augmentation reality, focusing on the design of different VR and how it can improve social interactions, communication and collaboration
• Exploration of how we can ethically design under gamification

Parallel Session 7 — Communication & Engagement within Hybrid Working Environment

Oleksandra ‘Sasha’ Ivashchenko, member of the Editorial Board of the MCAA and Medical physics resident at the Leiden University Medical Center, opened the session and presented the speakers:

Judy Wawira Gichoya, Department of radiology / Emory University School of Medicine / Assistant professorAntonio Martin-Carrillo, University College Dublin / Astra fellow/Assistant Professor

Sasha kicked off the session by explaining the major changes that the pandemic introduced to our working environment. In 2018, pre-pandemic, the number of people working remotely were very limited, and the position that were mostly covered interested especially managerial position. Today, the majority of people are working remotely, and the intention is to keep working like that as there are many advantages, ranging from flexibility, the possibility to remain close to the family, as well as the reduce need of travelling to the work place every day.

During this session, the discussion aimed to cover:

How can we stay connected?
Are there any risks? Such as discrimination
How to give courses within an hybrid environment
Do we even like hybrid environments?

Judy Wawira Gichoya started her pitch by presenting herself, and her expertise, as well as how her lab got created and how it changed during the pandemic.

She underlined the importance of creating a safe environment made of trust, in which everyone can feel comfortable in asking questions and should not worry about being judged — as constantly being a mentor or a mentee.
To be a good mentor, sharing a positive experience on social media can be key to inspire over young researchers.

What have I learned?
Recruitment - provide an extensive interview session, do not force people to travel and held more hybrid interview

Collaboration - more ways of communicating and to stay connected, especially a management tool that everyone can use and keep track of

As a summary, the key is to improve the work environment to make it more friendly and efficient.

Antonio Martin-Carrillo started his talk by emphasizing that the transition into a hybrid teaching can develop a more inclusive and engaging teaching approach for students.

While teaching online, it is important to create even more connections with the students, also at an emotional level. Using the outreach was a solution for Antonio, as he tried to engage students with personal passion, such as astrophotography.

Pre-pandemic: in person lecture → unidirectional, small dialogues with students → students take note, and if the students are not at school, a student would miss all the content.

While studying at home the student should rely only on his personal notes, and on the books.

Pandemic: pre-recorded lecture → student can freely study when they want or live (on-line) lecture → student to follow a lecture at a specific time.
But why not combine them?

Post-pandemic: online lecture and pre-recorded short videos aimed at studying while watching them. In this way, study and lecture time is done at the same time and students are able to follow their own pace.

There is also the possibility of in-person live session, creating an interactive session which could be helpful for them to understand complex concepts and revise what they have done so far

Benefits of the hybrid:

• Students have a specific calendar to rely on — students can plan when to watch and study them, as well as read the supporting material (transcripts, slides, subtitles which ensure an increase inclusivity)
• Live face to face session
• Weekly online exercises

At the end of his talk, Sasha opened the discussion part of the panel session, which cover especially the topic of social media and outreach.

Parallel Session 8 — Mentoring opportunities for MCAA members

Fernanda Bajanca is a clinical research manager as well as MCAA vice-chair of the board and executive committee. She is the moderator for the session.

The other panelists were:
Donata Iandolo is a research fellow at St. Etienne, France
Darragh McCashin is an assistant professor at Dublin University, Ireland
Daniel Patrick Balestrini is the research project coordinator and lecturer at the university of Regensburg, Germany. He talks about Global Talent Mentoring (GTM).

First, Daniel Patrick Balestrini talks about the special mentoring program for gifted youth to groom them into the leaders of the future.
He talks about how interest develops and grows into a different phase of skill acquisition after years of hard work and practice and how GTM takes from there to make them the leaders in their respective field where they can leave a mark on their field. It’s a long-term program which is global, online and is in English so, anyone who is interested in it can join the program. It generally starts for kids around the age of 15–16. It matches he youth with mentors based on interest and expertise.

If you feel like you are the expert in your field or are the youth looking for a bright career, join the program. Check more on globaltalentmentoring.org.
Donata Iandolo then takes the stage and talks about REFERENT program. REFERENT is a mentoring initiative to provide mental health peer support within MCAA by using experience of senior researchers and help with issues of young, budding researchers.
It is a peer-to-peer mentoring platform. Adry run will be performed initially before taking it for everyone. Other programs will be added to it at a later stage.
To be a part of it — join here.

Darragh McCashin takes the stage and talks about how negative sides of research such as bullying, toxic culture while demonstrating why mentoring for mental health is important based on data from MCAA, ReMO and Referent. Importance of rolling out of such a platform.

In the end, the session was open for Q&A.

In this section, you will read the Live blogging of the First 4 parallel sessions.

Parallel Session 1 — New European Research Area (ERA) — a dream or reality?
Parallel Session 2 — The role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in doctoral education
Parallel Session 3 — How to go green in the lab
Parallel Session 4 — Writing an ERC Synergy Grant Proposal

Parallel Session 1 — New European Research Area (ERA) — a dream or reality?

Mostafa Moonir Shawrav, Chair of the Marie Curie Alumni Association, opened the session and presented the speakers:

Barbara Weitgruber, Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research
Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques / Professeur honoraire
Lidia Borrell-Damian, Science Europe / Secretary General
Jan Palmowski, The Guild / Secretary General
Lucy Swan, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions — EC / Deputy Head of Unit

Barbara Weitgruber started the session by underlining the activities that the European Research Area has been carried out over the last decade, and she then focussed on the 20 ERA actions that should take place between 2022 and 2024 which should contribute to the the priority areas defined in the Pact for Research and Innovation.

Enable Open Science, including through the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)

Propose an EU copyright and data legislative framework for research

Reform the Assessment System for research, researchers and institutions

Promote attractive research careers, talent circulation and mobility

Promote gender equality and foster inclusiveness

Protect academic freedom in Europe

Upgrade EU guidance for a better knowledge valorisation

Strengthen research infrastructures

Promote international cooperation

Make EU research and innovation missions and partnerships key contributors to the ERA

An ERA for green transformation

Accelerate the green/digital transition of Europe’s key industrial ecosystems

Empower Higher Education Institutions

Bring Science closer to citizens

Build-up research and innovation ecosystems to improve excellence and competitiveness

Improve EU-wide access to excellence

Enhance public research institutions’ strategic capacity

Support the development of EU countries’ national processes for the ERA implementation

Establish an ERA monitoring system

Support research and innovation investments and reforms

She concluded her introductory talk by underlining the importance of having different stakeholders taking part in this change.

Jean-Pierre Bourguignon took over and underlined 3 key points that were underlined by Barbara Weitgruber:

• the needs of having having the researchers’ voice represented;
• the importance of putting more value in the research at the EU level, and the need to have uniform rules to assess the quality of research across different countries;
• having a balance in the research strategy: bottom-up research for long term objectives, and top-down research for short term objectives.

Lidia Borrell-Damian continued the panel by underlining how Science Europe is trying to adopt a different approach, which focuses completely on the science side, and on how it can affect our societies.
She discussed about the challenges we will have to face, such as the green and digital transition, open science, promote collaboration, as well as long term funding and the stability of the research.
To conclude her pitch, she mentioned that another special focus should be put on sustainable career development and research assessment :

We need to ensure that research assessment practices recognise the many varied contributions that researchers bring

To do that, there will be the need for a better dialogue and discussion amongst different stakeholders.

Jan Palmowski put his attention on the necessity of having a wider approach.

We need ERA to take the lead on this.

According to him, there is a need to change the assessment of the research, by moving away from an evaluation based mostly on impact factor, to a more holistic more holistic overview on the quality of science. In order to do that, there is consequent need to change the way Universities are funded by external third party funding, as the system should not be based again on impact factor.

The importance of ERA is about creating a more strategic dialog between governments, researchers, and institutions.

Lucy Swan talked about the new framework that has been developed and that will mainly focus on recruitment and working conditions as well as career development and progression.
The MSCA is already leading the way in this regard by supporting equality training and mentoring standards, as well as transferable skills development and promoting attractive working conditions.

She then continued her pitch by underlining an ongoing problem of the mobility of researchers that is represented by the transfer of brains between academia and industry, resulting most of the time as a one-way movement where researchers mostly move from the first one to the second one, but they rarely come back to the academia once they are in the industry — underlining that balancing mobility flows will require efforts across the board and it is up to the Member States to invest in R&I.

Mostafa open then a vivid discussion with both the online and live audience took place highlighting, and finally asked the 4 panelists a quick final thoughts:
Lucy Swan: one thing we need to improve is synergies — programs need to work together and have the same objectives

Jean-Pierre Bourguignon: we need young researchers to be organized, but more in general the scientific community needs a better organisation

Jan Palmowski: we need to become more active, talk with each other and find solution together, especially in the situation we are living in right now in Ukraine.

Lidia Borrell-Damian: we need to dialogue at the institutional level, government and researchers and a better recognition system in science.

Barbara Weitgruber: agreed with the other speakers and underlined that the various stakeholders will work to make these points happen in the near future.

Parallel Session 2 — The role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in doctoral education

Moderated by Christian Weber, Institute of Knowledge-Based Systems and Knowledge Management (KBS & KM), University of Siegen, Germany.
Speakers:
Gabor Kismihok, Information Centre for Science and Technology (TIB Leibniz)
Mathias Schroijen, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
Stephanie Gauttier, Grenoble Ecole de Management / Assistant Professor

Some key messages from the session:

• Gabor Kismihok: The learner drives the process. In the background we need teachers, supervisors, together with AI to create a knowledge base and influence the learning path working together to co-curate learning content. There is a long way ahead, this is just the beginning. We have to start thinking now how we can live with AI. Be mindful about the risks, benefits and the opportunities.
• Stephanie Gauttier: If the AI is smart, real personalisation can be possible but the user has to be critical.
• Gabor Kismihok: Experts are key for building an AI system but always think about the context and the pedagogical setting, the techniques that work or cannot work. Learning is very hard to do. There is no one else that would do it instead of you, but AI can.
• Mathias Schroijen: AI allows access to training at the moment that suits most the researcher. However, how do I prepare for something I do not know yet? For an AI system, there are lots of opportunities, e.g., providing a structure to identify training that could be of help to researchers and a learning environment that can guarantee that the information can reach them supporting both the supervisors and the PhD students career.
• Gabor Kismihok: Problem based learning, a research problem drives learning. How can I learn the stats to solve the problem as quickly as possible?
• Christian Weber: Retention is another critical point.
• Gabor Kismihok: At the end, we try and do the same in digital environment as in the real one.
• Christian Weber: There are different ways to recognise achievements and assess accordingly
• Mathias Schroijen: AI allows to create a learning community including a learning way to interact with each other
• Gabor Kismihok: Should our researchers receive training on AI? No, not all but it is important they understand there is a system behind to avoid expectations and misaligns and llet the user decide the level they would like to be informed
• Stephanie Gauttier: We should all be trained to some degree on AI. It is essential to understand what the technology is doing and to be critical, e.g., where that information is coming from, to learn and develop my own opinion to use that piece of learning and do something with it.
• Christian Weber: The degree to which to be trained on AI differs but a minimum education on AI should be available, the system should really tell what it is doing to have an informed decision.
• Gabor Kismihok: Openness and transparency of code and systems are key
• Mathias Schroijen: AI allows to increase the training capacity. Also, algorithms can learn from the users, and lead to a behavioural change. The focus should be on the communication
• Stephanie Gauttier: When it comes to ethics, security, transparency, doing no harm are among aspects being promoted and that should be kept in mind.

A sneak peak from the newly established platform on training researchers on AI. A demo was made available during the conference.

Parallel Session 3 — How to go green in the lab

The speakers of the session are Alexandra Dubini, distinguished researcher at the University of Cordoba, Spain and Nikoline Borgermann, a Sustainable Research Consultant focusing on laboratories at Ava Sustain in Copenhagen, Denmark — she is a biochemist by trade but passionate about the environment.

According to the World Health Organization, climate change is the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Not to mention that it is also at the forefront of the current agenda of global problems.
Laboratories and research centres have been established to solve global challenges and find biotechnology solutions. Nevertheless, scientific research leaves a large ecological footprint that directly affects climate change.
The question is:

How can we as researchers reduce the carbon footprint?

Despite popular belief, these solutions do not have to be time-consuming or expensive. There are simple steps researchers can implement to reduce the lab’s carbon footprint.
For example, there are a few actions you can take to reduce plastic usage and
energy consumption in the lab.

Plastic:

Downsize and minimize

Substitute

Reuse single-use products after cleaning

Use products that present alternatives to plastics

Energy consumption:

Turn off equipment and devices when they are not used

Find out how much time the devices need to warm up and turn them on
accordingly

Check the temperature of the -20°C and -80°C freezers

Organize the freezers and fill them up

Additionally, purchase reagents cautiously and only buy the amount you need.

In short, try to be as minimalist as you can and the carbon footprint will automatically reduce.

Parallel session 4 — Writing an ERC Synergy Grant Proposal

The moderator Irene Castellano Pellicena, took the lead of the session and presented the speakers who will take part in the discussion.

The first panelist was Judith Zbinden, Advisor for the European Research Council (ERC) in Switzerland, who opened the session by highlighting the key points for planning a successful ERC synergy grant proposal. She pointed out that after the PhD any researcher at any career stage can apply for this grant.

She also underlined that the synergy project should include 2–4 groups of researchers with complementary skills and requires a strong commitment.

The second speaker was Cristina Brito, Professor at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, brought her first-hand experience with a successful synergy grant “4Oceans Project”.
She opened her talk by explaining what the aims of her project are and how this project will advance the state of the art.

Generally speaking, what we can learn from her project is the groundbreaking nature of her project. She continued explaining how much time writing the proposal took (almost 2 years) and how much commitment from all the teams involved required (4 teams and 30 researchers in total).
Cristina Brito also showed how the work was distributed in the 6-year project.

You can follow the Cristina Brito and collaborators’ project on Twitter and Instagram: @4oceanserc

The last speaker of the session was Frank Schnorrer, a senior group leader at the Institute for Developmental Biology in Marseille, who brought another example of a successful synergy grant. He raised other aspects for a winning application. In particular, he underlined the importance of an interdisciplinary sinergy in the team of researchers. Importantly, once the topic is defined, it is necessary to find partners to make all work.

Frank also gave some tips for preparing an excellent interview:

All the PI need to be present in Brussels,

It is advisable to meet in person to prepare to talk and practice

The presentation can be given by more than one person (and all the PI can answer questions)

Keep in mind the broad diversity of expertise in the review panel

As also pointed out by Cristina Brito, Frank highlighted the importance of proposing a ground breaking idea with a clear impact on the state of the art for a synergy project.

Keynote 2 - Greening research and higher education institutions

The 2nd Keynote session was chaired by Karen Stroobants, Board member of the MCAA, and saw the participation of:
Henriette Stoeber, EUA European University Association
Astrid Eichhorn, University of Southern Denmark
Martin Farley, UCL

Karen introduced the speakers and then she moved on by presenting the challenges on moving into a more green research and how we should implement it in higher education institutions. To better understand the problem and what should we do to reduce emission, the 3 speakers gave very insightful overviews on the topic.

Henriette Stoeber presented what European University Association (EUA) is doing and who are they partners.
To better explain the problem, she presented the results of a survey (EUA survey on greening) that was taken all over Europe, and she highlighted that 61% of the institutions already have a strategy in place, and that 27% more were preparing one.

She indicated that, according to the survey, Universities are engaging the problem mostly for Institutional values, leadership engagement, and student and stuff engagement.
Also according to the survey, the main impacts and benefits of greening have been described as:

- institutional mission
- quality of life on campus
-stimulation of researchers in the field
- making institution more attractive (green credentials)
- economic benefits to be expected

Whilst the most common barriers in implementing a green approach have been described as:

Lack of funding
Coordination issues
Enhanced EU funding support
More engagement from stuff and students
European policy links:
European Green Deal
UN 2030 Agenda for sustainable development

Martin Farley took the stage as the second speaker and focussed his talk on the problem of sustainability in science.
He started his talk mentioning the Crisis of reproducibility, highlighting that “It takes a lot of resources to do science, and if results are not reproducible, are we actually spending the money in a good way?”
In fact, he quickly displayed that an ultra-low temperature freezer consumes as much energy as a house, or that a fume cupboard can use as much as 2–3 houses. And these data are relevant, as the scientific output increases every year by an 8–9 %, underlining this is a real problem.

To address this problem, he presented the Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF). “Its criteria have been specially selected to cover not just environmental aspects (e.g. waste management, procurement, equipment efficiency, chemical management etc.) but also to target business travel and research quality, addressing the international issues surrounding the ‘reproducibility crisis’. LEAF also includes metrics, enabling us to quantify ‘actual’ environmental and financial savings.”

He then concluded that it is great to see the spread of the green movement, but there is still work to be done.

Astrid Eichhorn was the last speaker of the session, and her talk covered the topic of the climate impact of the academic system and which are the steps that needs to be covered.

She first started her talk by mentioning the role of academia during this climate crisis:

Research to understand the origin, extent and impact of the climate change

Research on mitigation and adaptation strategies and technologies

Education of the general public and students

Evidence-based policy advance

She then put her focus on one of problems of the academic world: Conferences.
She underlined that conference used to require a lot of travelling, and of course, the longer the travel, the major impact on the climate change.

By going virtual, we would indeed reduce the amount of travelling required and we would also be able to have more inclusive meetings as we would enable people from all over the world to join, even the ones with limited possibilities to travel.

What should we do next then?

Develop a more comprehensive and evidence based overview of the problem

Mix and match approach to meetings (hybrid, online)

Developing virtual communication skills

Institutions should make climate sustainability as a centre of their institutional strategy

Funding organisations should incentivize carbon reductions in research activities and fund research on low-carbon alternatives in research

Individual researchers should be aware and reduce their impact

After the talk of all the speakers, a vivid discussion with both the online and live audience took place highlighting.

The conference will now take an hour and a half of break to have some lunch and some networking amongst the participants.
See you for the next parallel sessions!

Welcome and Plenary

Welcome to the Marie Curie Alumni Association Annual Conference 2022, Sustainability and the post-pandemic workplace.

Mostafa Moonir Shawrav, Chair of the Marie Curie Alumni Association since 2020, opened the session with the welcome ceremony. Finally, after the pandemic put on hold a lot of live events, we are back in Lisbon (Portugal) for this year’s conference, as well as online, making this conference the first hybrid event of the Marie Curie Alumni Association.

In this session, we are truly honored to be joined by:

Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for innovation, research, culture, education and youth

Maria Leptin, President of European Research Council

Marc Schiltz, CEO, Luxembourg National Research Funds

Manuel Heitor, Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education

and our very own Mostafa Moonir Shawrav, Chair of the Marie Curie Alumni Association and Fernanda Bajanca, Vice-Chair of the Marie Curie Alumni Association

Mostafa briefly introduced the theme of conference, Sustainability and the post-pandemic workplace, and welcomed all the guests and participants.

Commissioner Gabriel started her talk highlighting the difficult situation that is now happening in Ukraine due to the war, and she underlined on how the European Commission is trying to support researchers in Ukraine.
She focused on the ScienceForUkraine initiative and she asked researchers to keep supporting as much as possible.

Speaking of sustainable careers, she then addressed the problem underlining of how difficult it is for young researchers to pursue their career and to have a life stability. She mentioned the importance to involve even more the private sector, and to create an even stronger cooperation with the academic work.
The Commissioner underlined that “the priorities are researcher careers and assessment of research.”

She then stated that concrete actions must take place, one of them being increasing the funding for research and innovation to a 3% GDP on the European countries.

Prof. Leptin started her talk by mentioning the situation in Ukraine and that she of course condemned the war.

She proudly announced that

“We put out a call last week to our current grantees to say if they have any jobs open to Ukraine refugees. And within half an hour, they had 200 (and now 400) open positions to be covered. This is the strength of Europe standing together with Ukraine.”

Moving on to career sustainability, she underlined that “Careers in research and science is a random walk.”
She told her life and research path, and mentioned that she is not the person to be asked for career advice. She explained that she didn’t want to do a Ph.D., and she ended up doing one. She then did a Post-Doc, and she became a Professor, even though she did not want to at the beginning.
She also underlined that she enjoyed every moment of her career, but wanted to highlight that a scientific career path can be very diverse depending on personal interests and work possibilities.

Mostafa added as well that “We [MCAA] are trying to work on the diversification of research careers, and we are seeing that even within the MCAA we have many members to then move outside academia and work for the industry”

March Schiltz started his talk by mentioning that as President of Science Europe, the motto is to reshape the global scientific agenda.
We have the goal to bring together the expertise of some of the largest and best-known research organisations in the world to jointly push the frontiers of how scientific research is produced and delivers benefits to society.

He then touches on the importance of Open Access and how Science Europe is supporting this translation by establishing its very own set of common principles that will facilitate a smooth transition from subscription to Open Access.

He then move on talking about the success of the vaccine, and the key role that Europe played in their development. However, he also reported the limit and the problematic that the pandemic has had on many researcher and their careers, and underlined that it is time to have a reflection on this issue and that it should discuss during the next 2 days.

He concluded by underlining the importance to show solidarity with all the Ukraine living a difficult situation and he also underlined that all Europe should try as much as possible to help and support.

Manuel Heitor started his last public talk as a Minister mentioning that:

“Europe need more scientists, but also more scientific activism”

He stimulated the MCAA in taking the lead and show the importance of science to the wider public.

Citing Victor Hugo: “There is not a single dream to create the future” he discussed on the importance to look forward and to shape a better future for the researcher and the value that science has in this world.

“We have lived a pandemic, now the Ukraine war, and we don’t know what will happen the next month. The uncertainty can only be faced with more knowledge”

He agreed with Commissioner Gabriel, and stated that the challenge of the next 10 years will be to reach the 3% GDP on research and innovation.
We will collaborate also with private industries to make it happen.

“Science is a founding principle of our freedom and democracy.”

He concluded by mentioning that the post-pandemic research environment will be key especially for young researchers.

We all live in a digital world which certainly help the communication, but this also created problems related to fake news and on how some countries are controlling the stream of news.

Fernanda Bajanca closed the session, highlighting the presence of Ukrainian and Russian researchers and the importance of speaking up against the war. In particular, she invited everyone to join tomorrow’s session on this topic as we will discuss the problematic and display how the MCAA is trying to support and help.

Meet the live-blog team:

Ruben Riosa is a Medical Communications Manager, and is the Chair of the Communication Working Group of the Marie Curie Alumni Association.[Twitter]

Nicoleta Spînu is a Postdoctoral Research, and is the Vice-chair of the Communication Working Group of the Marie Curie Alumni Association.
[Twitter]

Ashish Avasthi is an early stage researcher at Bionand in Malaga, Spain. He is a volunteer in different groups of Marie Curie Alumni Association including the Communication Working Group. He likes to distribute his time among his varied interests of science, sports, and writing.
[Twitter]

Maria Montefinese is a Lead Researcher at the IRCCS San Camillo Hospital, Venice (Italy) and a collaborator of the Communication Working Group of the Maria Curie Alumni Association.
[Twitter]

Pradeep Eranti is a PhD student at the Université de Paris (France) and an Early Stage Researcher of the Machine Learning Frontiers in Precision Medicine (MLFPM-MSCA-ITN). He is an active volunteer of the Communication Working Group in the Marie Curie Alumni Association.
[Twitter]

Arturo Castro Nava completed his Ph.D. in Natural Sciences at the DWI — Leibniz-Institut für Interaktive Materialien (Germany) within the MSCA-ITN BIOGEL. He enjoys working with international teams, volunteering, and practicing Qigong.
[Twitter]