Empowering knowledge transfer to support research and drive impact in Horizon 2020

The EC has invested EUR 4m of funding in a flagship Blue Growth project designed to ensure that outputs arising from publicly-funded marine research projects have positive societal benefit. The three-year project is called COLUMBUS and involves 26 partners from across Europe managing knowledge and carrying out knowledge transfer of marine research outputs to measurably increase their uptake and application by different end-users, such as industry, policy makers, and society in general.

AquaTT – an Ireland-based SME and leader in the knowledge transfer and knowledge management fields – designed and wrote the project, which is coordinated by Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), the Irish State agency for seafood development. 'The EC has made significant investments in marine and maritime research and innovation projects spread across different programmes. Recent efforts have been made to monitor and facilitate access to information on these projects and their results. However, key tangible outputs are not always known or exploited when they could be of use to marine and maritime stakeholders, scientists and policy makers. COLUMBUS has been specifically designed to address this deficit,' explains David Murphy, AquaTT General Manager, and Strategic and Operational Leader for COLUMBUS.

Through its extensive track record in EC-funded projects (17 projects under the EC’s FP7 funding programme), AquaTT has become a recognised innovator in the fields of knowledge transfer, knowledge management, and science communication and dissemination. AquaTT was the coordinator of the pioneering FP7 MarineTT project (recognised as an ‘exemplar’ project in the ex post evaluation of FP7 to the EC), which led to the development of the Marine Knowledge Gate (www.kg.eurocean.org) a living open source knowledge portal that synthesises national and European marine scientific research outputs. The methodologies developed by MarineTT have subsequently been adopted by numerous projects and initiatives to unlock the potential of publicly-funded scientific research.

The COLUMBUS project will kick-off in April 2015. If you would like to know more about the project or would like to receive regular updates on its progress, please contact its Project Manager, Cliona NÍ Cheallacháin (email: [e-mail] tel: [phone])

Notes for Editors

COLUMBUS Project Information:
TITLE: COLUMBUS
PROGRAMME: Horizon 2020
INSTRUMENT: BG-11-2014
TOTAL BUDGET: €4 million
DURATION: 36 months
COORDINATOR: Bord Iascaigh Mhara
CONSORTIUM: 26 partners

COLUMBUS Overarching Objective: Ensure that applicable knowledge generated through EC-funded science and technology research can be transferred effectively to advance the governance of the marine and maritime sectors while improving competitiveness of European companies and unlocking the potential of the oceans to create future jobs and economic growth in Europe (Blue Growth).

Project Coordinator
Tom Scanlon
Email: [e-mail]
Bord Iascaigh Mhara
Crofton Road
Dun Laoghaire
Dublin
Ireland
www.bim.ie

Strategic and Operational Leader
David Murphy
Email: [e-mail]

Project Manager
Cliona NÍ Cheallacháin
Email: [e-mail]
AquaTT
Olympic House
Pleasants Street
Dublin 8
Ireland

Keywords

• Blue Growth
• Knowledge Transfer
• Knowledge Management

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