Andalusia, the region home to the LifeWatch ERIC Statutory Seat and ICT-Core, drives the innovative Smartfood Project in the agricultural and fishing sectors. SmartFood is led by the Andalusia Agency for Agriculture and Fisheries Development (AGAPA), which is part of the Junta de Andalucía, and its aim is to better understand the impact of agriculture on the region’s biodiversity. On Monday 18 July, in Cordoba, a project event was held in which a balloon sensor probe was thrown, attended by LifeWatch ERIC CEO, Christos Arvanitidis, CTO, Juan Miguel González-Aranda, Project Coordinator, Rocío Moreno Domínguez, Direction Secretary and QARM/FitSM Technical Assistant, María Luz Vázquez Santana, and Satellite & HAPS Operations Manager...

This week, LifeWatch ERIC personnel Juan Miguel González-Aranda (CTO), Maria Luz Vázquez (Direction Secretary & QARM - FiTSM Technical Assistant for ICT-Core), Rocío Moreno (Project Executive Coordinator) and Cristina Huertas Olivares (International Initiatives & Projects Manager) are in Montevideo, Uruguay, for the second General Assembly of ResInfra EU-LAC. The ResInfra EU-LAC project pursues the construction of bi-regional collaboration between European Union and the LAC countries (Latin America and the Caribbean), and the meeting has gathered representatives from Uruguay and the European Commission as well as partners of the EU-LAC ResInfra Consortium to discuss items such as the project Sustainability Plan, the benefits of Research Infrastructure cooperation, and the next Horizon Europe INFRA work programme. On 20 July, LifeWatch ERIC CTO Juan Miguel González-Aranda gave...

In May this year, LifeWatch Italy was invited to join the COST Action CA20125 - Applications For Zoosporic Parasites In Aquatic Systems – ParAqua. The main aims of this project are to organise and coordinate an innovative and dynamic network of academia researchers, industries, and water management authorities to advance and apply knowledge and expertise on zoosporic parasites (i.e. aquatic fungi and fungi-like microorganisms) and the relation with their hosts in natural ecosystems and industrial algal biotech production.  Among the ParAqua objectives, specific task of WG1 and WG2 is to compile and integrate a database on zoosporic parasites across Europe...

The ALL-Ready Pilot Network Meeting took place on 4-6 July 2022 in Ghent, including a Demonstration Day in Hansbeke. The meeting gathered the members of the Pilot Network and the consortium partners, in person and remotely. The meeting included an interesting discussion about how to operationalise the thematic working groups during the project and a learning roundtable about best practices for co-creation, involving stakeholders. On the second day, a workshop was organised for Work Packages 4, 5 and 6 to discuss 1) Why a European Network of Agroecology Living Labs and Research Infrastructure is important, 2) What competencies and skills a European Network can improve, and 3)...

From 10–15 July 2022, 20 students of 13 different nationalities – European, American, Iranian and Pakistani – participated in the ENVRI Community International Summer School organised by LifeWatch ERIC in the framework of the Horizon2020 ENVRI-FAIR project, with the support of the University of Salento. Now at its fourth edition, this year’s Summer School happily returned to an in-person format, after the last couple of editions were forced to migrate online, and was hosted in the heart of Lecce by the University of Salento, which is the site of the LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre. The Summer School welcomed the participants on the...

Today, 15 July 2022, the ERIC Forum organised an online session as part of the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF2022), taking place in Leiden from 13 – 16 July 2022. The session, entitled “Research Infrastructures’ contribution to environmental sustainability” puts Research Infrastructures and the added value they bring to the European Research Area in the spotlight, with their major role in creating new opportunities to advance scientific research, enabling access to large-scale facilities and e-Science infrastructures. LifeWatch ERIC Chief Technology Officer, Juan Miguel González-Aranda, is joining the session with a presentation on the “The key role of Research Infrastructures to advance Environmental Sustainability through Digital...

Circa eighty members of the LifeWatch ERIC Common Facilities and representatives of the Member States gathered in the LifeWatch ERIC ICT-Core headquarters in Seville on 12 and 13 July for a meeting on the future of the Infrastructure. Kicking off the two-day proceedings were Executive Board members CEO Christos Arvanitidis, CTO Juan Miguel González-Aranda and CFO Lucas de Moncuit, who presented the LifeWatch ERIC Strategic Work Plan for 2022–2026, and José Carlos Álvarez Martín, Managing Director of the Agricultural and Fisheries Management Agency of Andalusia, who stressed the importance of the collaboration between LifeWatch ERIC and the Andalusian Region, for the sustainable development of the region, particularly in the field of agroecology.  Overall, the strategic objectives of the meeting were...

We are back for another season! The first LifeWatch ERIC podcast season focused on the Internal Joint Initiative, the construction of Virtual Research Environments (VREs), and the second drew on the five validation cases used to develop those VREs. Season Three starts up on 20 July 2022, moving a little outside the infrastructure itself into the broader world of Open Science, Invasive Alien Species and practical applications of the LifeWatch ERIC VRE. The first five episodes span the August holiday break: Wednesday 20 July: WoRMS (World Register of Marine Species)Wednesday 3 August: Ocean OptimismWednesday 7 September: The Critical ZoneWednesday 21 September: Essential Biodiversity Variables, andWednesday 5 October: The ENVRI Project. These LifeWatch ERIC podcasts will be embedded in our website portal at the following link (find all of Season 1 here and Season 2 here), and are...

Calling everyone with a thirst for knowledge! Introducing LifeWatching: the new WebTV for biodiversity research in Europe. The LifeWatching Science Channel is a free, multi-themed platform, available on any device, at any time, providing you with your fill of up-to-date, on-the-ground videos from key players in the European research landscape. On this new WebTV exclusively for video content on biodiversity and ecosystem research, you can learn about current projects and higher education programmes at national and European level, dive into the hidden worlds of wild creatures and the scientists who keep track of them, as well as follow high-level conferences...

On 8 July, a LifeWatch ERIC delegation composed of the Chief Technology Officer, Juan Miguel González-Aranda, and LifeWatch ERIC QARM - FiTSM Technical Assistant for ICT-Core, María Luz Vázquez-Santana, together with the Coordinator of the main initiative of the Smart Food AgroEcology Andalusia ERDF, Rocío Moreno, met with the President of Diputación of the Huelva province, María Eugenía Limón.The question at the heart of the meeting was how to foster ongoing collaborations and create new synergies between the e-Science Research Infrastructure, LifeWatch ERIC, and the Province of Huelva: a strategical area playing a pivotal trans-boundary role in the Euroregion Algarve-Alentejo-Andalucía...

On 7 July, LifeWatch ERIC CTO and other ICT staff members visited the Hercules Supercomputer-HPC premises hosted by the CICA – Centro Informático Científico de Andalucía (Andalusian Scientific Computer Centre)–, as one of the main facilities involved in the LifeWatch ERIC AstarteWatch network. The equipment, which is located in Seville at the aforementioned centre, has a RAM of 47.5 terabytes (47,500 GB), a capacity of 1,000 TB (1 PB) and a power of calculation that is estimated at 855 teraflops, equivalent to 855 billion floating point operations per second (FLOPS), which is the parameter used to measure the effiency of this...

The EOSC Future General Assembly and Consortium Meeting took place on 5–6 July 2022 at the Royal Olympic Hotel, Athens. The meeting gathered the consortium partners, in person and remotely, and was a crucial moment to assess the first 18 months of work, align technical and non-technical milestones, and coordinate the steps ahead to ensure the success of project activities. EOSC Future is an EU-funded H2020 project that is implementing the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), which will give European researchers access to a fully operational web of data and related services founded on FAIR protocols, principles and standards for accessing interoperable datasets. Several members of...

The BiCIKL project is welcoming submissions of Expression of Interest (EoI) for the First BiCIKL Open Call for projects. The purpose of this call is to solicit, select and implement four to six biodiversity data-related scientific projects that will make use of the added value services developed by the leading Research Infrastructures that make up the BiCIKL project.   BiCIKL has established a European starting community of key research infrastructures, researchers, citizen scientists and other biodiversity and life sciences stakeholders based on open science practices through access to data, tools and services.To learn more about this Open Call for Projects, please visit the dedicated page...

Last week, Africa Zanella, LifeWatch ERIC Gender Consultant and International Consultant and official observer at the World Bank’s Climate Investment Fund, attended the 1st European Innovation Area Summit at the European Parliament in Brussels. The Summit built on a series of EIA events from the past 18 months during which Commissioner Gabriel and many political members of the K4I Forum were actively engaged, coinciding with the unveiling of the European Commission’s New European Innovation Agenda for a European Innovation Area. Innovation is key in accelerating the green and digital economy of tomorrow, and the initiative will offer equal access to funding, where startups in one country can easily...

Actiniaria – or sea anemones – are now accessible through their very own portal within the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), an initiative whose data management team is supported by LifeWatch Belgium. The information in the new World List of Actiniaria contains information rescued from the Hexacorallians of the World Database of the late Daphne Fautin, and the portal's launch is partially linked to the last phase of integrating all information from the Hexacorallians of the World database into WoRMS. The benefit of this is that this data can now be freely accessible through a solid platform with dedicated maintenance...