Transfer of knowledge: the experienced researcher has gained new skills including the use of stable isotopes and trace gases to infer metabolic and ecophysiological plant processes, pneumatics, programming, biochemical assays, numerical computation and big-data managing, while performing the activities from the various working packages within the host team and in collaboration with other research groups. The candidate has actively engaged in multiple teaching and mentoring activities with INRA’s partner institutions: the Université de Bordeaux (UB) and Bordeaux Science Agro (BSA, the agricultural engineer school); supervision of two master and one PhD students.
Outreach: the work developed within USIFlux has rendered various sound scientific publications (see publications) and the experienced researcher has performed various activities to ensure the outcome and progress of USIFlux reach the specialized scientific community and a broader audience. The experienced researcher promoted the results obtained in USIFlux in various international conferences, meetings and spesialised workshops (the EGU general assembly, the international photosynthesis conferences, the first COS workshop and more).
To achieve an effective outreach and communication beyond the specialised scientific community, we have taken part on a number of initiatives. At the institutional level (INRA), in 2016, Teresa participated in the department seminar series. This series is aimed at sharing project progress with other scientific colleagues, which do not necessary work on the same domain. In 2017, Lisa Wingate (supervisor and project manager) gave a talk, which she prepared with Teresa, to another INRA research unit. Besides academic meetings and seminars, we have also engaged on outreach activities for the broader non-scientific public. Recently, Teresa, together with Jérôme Ogée (project supervisor) and the rest of the ECOFUN team, organized a training workshop for high-school teachers. The aim of this activity was to approach teachers to the reality of how science is done and to help instructors update their teaching material. All participants gave very positive feedback and left our laboratory with a much more realistic idea of what being a scientist is like, which they said would help them encourage students to pursue a career in science. For disseminating and broadcasting of the major achievements and project progress we rely on the press office of the host institution (INRA-Bordeaux). Timely press releases are prepared jointly between the USIFlux project participants and the communication officer. In addition, Teresa maintains an active profile on twitter (@TerefiGimeno), solely devoted to communication in science. Finally, the ECOFUN website hosts a page for the USIFlux project where we publish all our progress.
