Aquaculture Infrastructures for Excellence in European Fish Research: Final AQUAEXCEL newsletter now available
AQUAEXCEL was an EC FP7-funded project working to integrate key aquaculture research infrastructures across Europe in order to promote their coordinated use and development. The project’s focus was on further improving the efficiency of aquaculture production and supporting European research activities in this area. Marc Vandeputte, AQUAEXCEL Project Coordinator, said: 'After four years of fruitful collaboration, AQUAEXCEL has fulfilled its strategic objectives through the integration of 17 key partners and 27 top class infrastructures, and has been rewarded by numerous applications from Europe and beyond to access our facilities, resulting in 97 innovative and highly original Transnational Access projects taking place. An enlarged AQUAEXCEL consortium has submitted a new project to the EC. The final decision on its funding should be known shortly and we look forward to hopefully continuing this aquaculture challenge towards 2020.' The final issue of AQUAEXCEL Project News includes: concluding remarks from Mark Vandeputte; a summary of the infrastructure mapping, strategic planning and sustainability activities carried out under AQUAEXCEL; details of a new report entitled 'Model for sustained research infrastructure collaboration', which explores future possibilities for sustained and coordinated collaboration of aquaculture research infrastructures in Europe; researchers who have accessed the AQUAEXCEL Transnational Access programme describe their work and experiences using the programme to further their research; and participants from the fourth AQUAEXCEL training course give their feedback. For more information about the AQUAEXCEL project, please visit: www.aquaexcel.eu Notes for Editors AQUAEXCEL officially concluded on 28 February 2015. The project had an overall budget of EUR 11.8 million and received a total of €9.2 million of EC funding under the ‘Research Infrastructures' area of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), reflecting the EC’s interest in prioritising aquaculture and boosting the aquaculture sector by promoting research for competitiveness and environmental sustainability. AQUAEXCEL was coordinated by France’s Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), which led a strong partnership of sixteen institutions from Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the UK. AquaTT was the project’s communications and dissemination partner. For press queries, please contact: Marieke Reuver, Programme Manager, AquaTT, Dublin, Ireland, email: marieke@aquatt.ie, web: www.aquatt.ie
Countries
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, United Kingdom