At the EVOLTREE 2019 Governing Board Meeting in Aberdeen in September, an appraisal was made of all the network activities and resources in order to help shape the current phase of EVOLTREE (2019-2022).
Fulfilling the research needs of EVOLTREE members is at the heart of everything EVOLTREE does; it endeavours to deliver to its network the activities, initiatives and resources that are most requested and needed at the time. This is why, at the onset of each new four year phase, EVOLTREE carries out a survey to determine the overall needs of the EVOLTREE community and consults its Governing Board members.
Taking into account the results of the latest consultations, as well as the current EVOLTREE budget, decisions were made at the EVOLTREE 2019 Governing Board Meeting in September regarding the direction the network is to take in this new four year phase (2019-2022). The board identified and approved the activities to be maintained in this phase, as well as those to be prioritised and unfortunately stopped. What's more, two new activities were approved.
The result aims to bring a breath of fresh air to the network, hopefully injecting it with some new energy, ideas and dynamics and ensuring that members from all over the network will benefit.
So what will EVOLTREE be bringing its members from 2019 to 2022?
Take a look below:
Prioritised (core activities) | Maintained | Stopped | Newly introduced |
eLab & Portals Funding Training Communications | Intensive Study Sites TreeType | Repository Centre | Shaping the Funding Environment Bi-annual EVOLTREE Conferences |
While we are looking forward to implementing the new activities and to further developing and maintaining the existing ones, it is with regret that we are letting the Repository Centre go, due to general gradual disuse and funding restrictions.
A common storage facility that hosts biological and genetic resources collected by EVOLTREE members, the Repository Centre was established when EVOLTREE was launched as an EU-funded Network of Excellence in 2006.
Now a self-supporting research group, EVOLTREE can only afford to sustain popular activities and resources. Therefore, the Repository Centre will be operational until the end of December 2019. For more details about what this closure will imply for any of your material, please contact your institute's EVOLTREE Governing Board representative.
‘Shaping the Funding Environment’, is a new initiative aiming to support members in developing research proposals by, for example, using the network to canvas opinion and prioritise research needs, to raise awareness of different research opportunities and to circulate EVOLTREE-motivated topics via members’ national channels.
The idea behind the second new activity, the Bi-annual EVOLTREE Conferences, is to provide a forum every two years for the EVOLTREE community - in particular students and early career scientists - to meet and discuss topics related to the network.
These two new initiatives are in their beginning stages of development and dedicated working groups comprising volunteer members will contribute to and oversee their implementation. A third working group will be responsible for ensuring the revision of both the structure and the content of the EVOLTREE databases and the website in general.
The funding initiatives that were in place in the last phase will continue, with new resources being allocated to the popular OPPORTUNITY Project Grants (next call in 2020).
We hope that you will be able to benefit from one or more of our initiatives in order to help develop and give visibility to your research in this new phase. We will keep you updated with all developments!
Written by Hayes4Com
