EU-LIFE 10th Anniversary
Both events were held on 5-7 June in Lisbon, Portugal, bringing together all the member institutes. All attendees received a warm welcome from Mónica Bettencourt-Dias, Chair of EU-LIFE and IGC Director, followed by parallel meetings of the strategy group and all working groups. The occasion allowed all the groups to discuss and plan future activities of the alliance.
The EU-LIFE Conference, Envisioning the Research Centres of the Future, followed the community meeting. This was an excellent opportunity to celebrate the first ten years of existence and the successes of EU-LIFE. The event’s purpose was to provide a space and time to imagine how the places where research takes place shall be in the future to empower scientists, promote ground-breaking discoveries and actively engage with society.
The program was organized around four keywords: creativity, collaboration, multidisciplinarity, and proactivity. Members and leaders of the scientific community from all stages of the research careers and policymakers joined us to give their vision and stimulate the debate around the role of these four topics in science. Keynote speakers included Maria Leptin, President of ERC; Stefano Boeri, Architect & Professor of Urban Planning at Milan Politecnico; Alex Jordan, Group Leader at Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour; and Henrique Leitão, Senior Researcher & Provost of the University of Lisbon.
The program included a session devoted to the journey of EU-LIFE so far, its role in the European scientific environment, and its mission for the future. The poster session was one of the conference’s highlights, with over 40 posters showcasing initiatives enhancing research organizations.
There was also time to present the awarded essays of the EU-LIFE/Nature Essay Contest: Utopia Institute of Research in a panel with the winning authors and jury members. A group of early-career researchers acted as rapporteurs, summarizing the main conclusions and their perspectives at the end of the event.
All the best moments are recorded in the video.