PROTECT “SUMMER” SCHOOL 2 – LYDIA KATSINI
After coming back from the Christmas holidays, the ESRs participated in the first training event of the year, PROTECT “Summer” School 2. The 4-day event was hosted by KU Leuven/BioTeC+ and took place during the last week of January (25thto 28th).
The Summer School was mainly focused on transferable skills and technical training. The first day started off with PROTECT coordinator Prof. Enda Communis (UCD) and Prof. Jan Van Impe (KU Leuven) welcoming the participants and providing a brief overview of the activities to follow. The morning session, dedicated toKnowledge Transfer, included a speech by Mr. Andras Havasi, Corporate Research & Knowledge Transfer Manager from the University of Malta entitled “Fundamentals: a brief overview of what knowledge transfer is about, what opportunities it presents early-stage researchers and what they can expect”. Afterwards, Dr Daniel Buhagiar, CEO and Co-founder of FLASC BV, presented his success story. The afternoon session focused onDissemination Activitieswith speakers Ass. Prof. Becca Ferrari, University of Nottingham, Melike Berker, Programme and Project Manager at UoN and Dr Tom Stanton from Nottingham Trent University. The topics covered were “Social media for research management” and the case study “Plastics, Pollution and People. Cross-sector stakeholder engagement and dissemination across multiple platforms”.
The theme of the morning session of the second day wasEntrepreneurship and Researchby NovaUCD. Invited speakers where Dr Stacey Kelly, Case Manager, Knowledge Transfer, Agriculture, Food and Veterinary Science (NovaUCD), Caroline Gill, Innovation Education Manager (NovaUCD) and Antoine Pajot, Director, AgTech Innovation Centre (NovaUCD). The afternoon session was more technical and oriented towardsData Analysiswith Dr Satyajeet Sheetal Bhonsale (KU Leuven/BioTeC+) delivering a lecture on “Uncertainty and uncertainty propagation (in the context of scenario analysis)”.
The following day included a morning session dedicated toData Analysisas well. PhD researcher Carlos André Muñoz López (KU Leuven/BioTeC+) introduced the ESRs into “Data Mining Fundamentals”. The afternoon session included a speech by Sam Baeten (legal counsel at KU Leuven Research and Development) entitled “Research from a tech transfer perspective”.
The final day of the Summer School covered the topics ofIntellectual Property and Research Exploitation. The first speaker was Ivo De Baere, IP Officer at KU Leuven LRD, with a talk on “Intellectual Property Rights: General Introduction & Case Studies”, the second speech was given by Wim Fyen, Investment manager at LRD, highlighting the steps involved “From Idea to Business Plan”. Last but not least, Dr. Rudi Cuyvers (Innovation manager at LRD) explained the need for a thorough “Exploitation plan development”.
As always, it was a nice opportunity for all the PROTECT members to meet, to chat and to have fruitful discussions. The second PROTECT Summer School offered numerous helpful takeaways for all ESRs. We are all looking forward to meeting again, hopefully in person!
