In this week's kick-off meeting, ACEEU participated in the launching of the BETTER-Life project (Bringing Excellence to Transformative Socially Engaged Research in Life Sciences through Integrated Digital Centres). During a three-day meeting, the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CZU) hosted partners from Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Italy, Poland, Romania and Serbia to envision how the project will progress.
As part of the BETTER-Life project, a European Digital Centre of Excellence will be established to promote, support, and build the capacities for implementing socially engaged research in the life sciences. Diverse European institutions will develop strategies for addressing social challenges through the research developed by early career researchers through this support structure. By consolidating such approaches, the local ecosystems of the institutions will benefit from a wide range of social, cultural, and economic benefits.
In the course of their discussion, the partners identified the following challenges for the project:
- Developing a coherent, broad, and flexible vision and strategy for the EU BETTER-Life Centre that enables it to generate valuable contributions for the partner institutions, other European institutions, and worldwide.
- Ensuring the added value of the centre for stakeholders and its long-term sustainability after the funding period of the project.
- Creating coherent approaches at the individual, institutional, systemic, and international levels that facilitate the establishment of an ecosystem for engaged research in the life sciences while guaranteeing the autonomy of diverse academic traditions and institutional cultures.
- Setting the foundations with the right set of concepts, methodologies, and policies articulating the existing knowledge and offering practical advice that supports the engagement strategy of the institutions.
- Outreaching the key partners and the existing initiatives for generating mutually beneficial collaborations for disseminating, exploiting, and maximizing the impact of the project.
The kick-off meeting ended with high enthusiasm for the development of the project. The partners are highly engaged in working to consolidate the BETTER-Life Centre as a reference for building capacities in socially engaged research. Additionally, they see the potential for developing future synergies internally and externally, which will enhance the impact of the initiative.
