3th Elevate consortium meeting, 8-10 February 2021
Due to the pandemic and it’s restrictions, our researchers gathered virtually this year. They had a 3-day online annual consortium meeting to discuss the progression, the challenges and the impact of COVID-19 on the project.
The 3rd annual meeting of the H2020 ELEVATE Project was planned to take place in Ecuador. Of course, given the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to change course and threw on the virtual track for the first time. The meeting took place from the 8th to the 10th of February 2021.
After a welcoming session by our project coordinator, Professor Olivier Degomme (Ghent University), presentation was given by our Programme Officer, Ioannis Vouldis regarding the new research & innovation programme of the European Commission ‘Horizon Europe’. This was followed by an update on the latest achievements. Several project activities have been affected by the continuing COVID-19 crisis and some of them will need to be further postponed. The project team is committed to cope with these persisting challenges and adapted the project activities by developing an alternative timeline and using remote working as effectively as possible.
Each work package leader had sent in a video presentation by forehand to have a recap of the status of the work performed in the different work packages, including the progress and challenges of the past year. By doing so, we could directly go into the in-depth discussions during the next two days of the meeting. The Elevate project is a multidisciplinary project that strongly relies on collaboration between different teams and the implementation and transferability of research findings. Therefore the longer discussion sessions were very fruitful to understand each other’s work and to agree on the next steps to be taken.
We ended the meeting with some encouraging words and recommendations of our Scientific Advisory Board. It were three days of intense but meaningful work. Next meeting will be hosted by UCuenca in Ecuador.