EULAC ENERGYTRAN intends to strengthen the cooperation between the European Union and Latin American and the Caribbean research infrastructures to tackle a common challenge: how to get a clean, sustainable and just energy transition. This project pursues its goal through the exchange, generation and transfer of knowledge among entities from a multidisciplinary approach (technological, environmental, social) and through the support to the development of public policies and regulatory frameworks towards climate neutrality. This general goal will be achieved by four specific goals that respond the multidisciplinary approach, in tune with the complexity of the energy transition. Therefore, the project supports technological R&I to overcome the existing limitations of renewable energies but acknowledging these developments may have an environmental and social impact which must be addressed. This proposal wants to come up with ideas about how to achieve an energy transition compatible with environment protection and social justice. Energy transition is at the top of the political agendas of both regions, EU and LAC, so this project may contribute to consolidating it as a priority area of interregional scientific cooperation. This project will be carried out by a heterogenous and interdisciplinary consortium composed of eleven partners with wide presence in the EU and LAC. They include ERICS and an international organization, among other entities, from different areas of knowledge. This way the complexity of the energy transition is better tackled. Under this scheme, EULAC ENERGYTRAN will create a network of an interconnected and sustainable EU and LAC research infrastructures that contributes to energy transition by technological, social and sustainably strengthening the performance of entities through shared knowledge and close interactions among researchers. This common effort will mean a step forward, in both regions, to reach a society that needs to be resilient.

Research Infrastructures (RI) are standing pillars for excellence in science and a vital element for the realization of the European Union as a knowledge-based society. Together with Core Facilities (CF)- existing in many universities, academic research centres and national nodes of distributed RI- RI are also major actors in the implementation of the EU Open Science and Open Innovation strategy and a major factor for its success. As RI and CF increase in importance, questions about how to organize, maintain, manage and finance them have become a major topic for funding and research organisations. This proposal brings together, for the first time, RI, CF and European universities, in a new innovative concept to transform the access and empowerment of human resources for national and international scientific facilities in Europe. The overarching goal of RItrainPlus is to design and deliver a training programme to fulfill the competency requirements for the current and future managers of European RI and CF. RItrain Plus will: i) drive excellence, operational improvements and long-term sustainability of European RI and CF by developing: formal learning activities: executive post-graduate courses; learning on the job: staff exchange, with a short-term mobility programme at different RI/CF locations; peer learning: a Community of Practice, within all RI and CF, able to promote existing excellence and experience, and share knowledge; ii) create a foundation for the long-term provision of highly qualified personnel for managing RI and CF by developing Learning Activities embedded in existing university programs and a certifiable European Longitudinal Learning Track; iii) establish a permanent and self-sustainable European School for Management of Research Infrastructures. In the four-year project all the required steps will be performed, with extended involvement of ERICs, EIROforum members, national agencies, and other relevant stakeholders in the design process.

PERMAGOV aims to contribute to the realization of the EU Green Deal objectives by improving implementation and performance of EU marine policies. PERMAGOV’s project objectives are: 1) co-developing and applying a Marine Governance Performance Assessment Framework to assess how institutional barriers, formal and informal collaborations and e-governance tools enable and constrain the capability of actors to implement EU marine policies within the areas of Marine Energy, Maritime Transport, Marine Life and Marine Litter; and 2) co-producing Multi-Layered Collaborative Marine e-Governance Strategies which enhance the capability of end-users to contribute to the implementation of EU marine policies related to the four marine issue areas to achieve the EU Green Deal goals. PERMAGOV will contribute to the improved performance of marine polices and a successful implementation of the EU Green Deal objectives, by an assessment of 9 cases (De-carbonizing shipping, Motorways of the Sea (Maritime Shipping), Seabed integrity, Sustainable fisheries in MPAs (Marine Life), Floating Wind, Energy island, Offshore Wind (Marine Energy), Marine litter (Baltic and Mediterranean Seas)(Marine Plastics)), focusing on the enabling and constraining conditions of institutional barriers and the possibilities for multi-layered collaborative and e-governance. Characteristics for PERMAGOV is co-production and co-creation from the start to the end of the project and beyond. Together with end-users and stakeholders from maritime industries, NGOs, researchers and policymakers the Performance Assessment Framework will be developed and applied, in co-production the cases will be assessed, innovative Governance Strategies will be developed and digital tools will be improved in order to overcome the barriers hampering the performance of marine policies and the successful implementation of the objectives of the European Green Deal.

BiCIKL is a proposal that will initiate and build a new European starting community of key research infrastructures, establishing open science practices in the domain of biodiversity through provision of access to data, associated tools and services at (1) each separate stage of, and (2) along the entire research cycle. BiCIKL will provide new methods and workflows for an integrated access to harvesting, liberating, linking, accessing and re-using of sub-article-level data (specimens, material citations, samples, sequences, taxonomic names, taxonomic treatments, figures, tables) extracted from literature. BiCIKL will provide for the first time access and tools for seamless linking and usage tracking of data along the line: specimens → sequences → species → analytics → publications → biodiversity knowledge graph → re-use.

The EU Mission to restore our Oceans and Waters by 2030 relies on robust, reliable and ideally real-time biodiversity data. The analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) extracted from water or sediment, represents a major source of innovation in aquatic ecosystem monitoring with great potential to support the EU Mission. The central limitation for the routine implementation of eDNA-based methods are incomplete, disconnected and non-standardized reference libraries for taxonomic assignment as well as a lack of harmonised metadata. To support the coordination of the EU Mission Ocean strategy, eDNAqua-Plan will 1) collect information on existing projects, initiatives and infrastructures for aquatic monitoring in the EU and associated countries, 2) provide an overview of all national and international activities of standardization and interoperationalisation of methods and data workflows and 3) assess the relevance and feasibility of the creation of a digital ecosystem of eDNA repositories and an integrated and dynamic reference library of marine and freshwater species that is open-access and based on FAIR principles to support future aquatic biodiversity monitoring programmes and mapping initiatives. The interdisciplinary eDNAqua-Plan consortium comprises 18 partner institutions from 11 countries, and one international (UN) institute, with complementary expertise in marine and freshwater monitoring, eDNA analysis as well as data science. The consortium cooperates with the large EU research projects and infrastructure such as EMODnet, BIOSCAN-Europe, the Ocean and Water knowledge system, LifeWatch, and international systems (ELIXIR/EBI and OBIS) etc. to maximise synergies and interoperability internationally. Possible implementation will be demonstrated by use cases from national and transnational water monitoring programs. Based on this, eDNAqua-Plan will deliver a roadmap for harmonized aquatic monitoring using eDNA tools in Europe and beyond.