1st EERA scientific conference
Birmingham, 24th - 25th November 2016
On 24th and 25th November 2016 the first EERA scientific conference was held in Birmingham (UK). The conference, organised in a plenary and parallel sections was a great opportunity to catch a cross-view of the main research topics that are going on inside the Joint Programs (JP). Namely EERA gathers more than 175 research organizations all across Europe and through 17 JP's covers all the research fields related to low-carbon energy.
The conference was opened by Hervé Bernard, the EERA chairman, who underlined the crucial role of EERA as a key pillar for the European energy strategy and the its importance in aligning the research efforts on the EU Set-plan. In this frame, he said that EERA conference was a great opportunity to enhance interdisciplinary research and foster collaboration between EERA JP's.
After the plenary section, the conference continued in the following parallel sections:
• Energy systems
• Materials
• Standardization/coordination,
• Earth underground energies (only on the 24th)
• Joint programs development (only on the 25th)
ELECTRA was mostly involved in the "energy systems", section consisting in five sequential mini-blocks. Namely ELECTRA organised and chaired three mini-blocks, where also three presentations related to ELECTRA technical results were delivered (see the attachments below). At the end of each mini-block there was a panel debate where the whole audience could ask questions or give comments.
The conference was closed with a brief wrap-up for each parallel section and, in the final conclusions, the EERA chairman underlined that the conference was a very positive moment for collaboration and information exchange among JPs and has to be repeated in the next years.
Finally the ELECTRA project was mentioned among the "success stories", describing the best achievements among the JP's. In particular a fact sheet about ELECTRA REX mobility program was inserted among the conference material, due to the innovativeness and the well-defined procedure for the research exchange both at European and at international level. For this reason the ELECTRA experience will be considered to define a common mobility scheme for the whole EERA Programme. In order to better define the procedure a questionnaire is still active at this link.
