Both ICETA-CIBIO and UM have gained international scientific prestige in the fields of Environmental and Biodiversity Sciences, and possess the critical mass to promote the much-needed modernization of these sectors,
as well as to tackle major societal challenges by bringing together environment, forestry and agriculture for rural development and sustainability in general.
BIOPOLIS will strongly contribute to the expected impacts set out in the work programme, under the TEAMING program topic:
i. Sustainable increasing of the R&D&I excellency in agriculture, environment and biodiversity by teaming with UM. The exchanging of people and knowledge will expand the development and implementation of new research approaches and results.
ii. Increased attractiveness of the institution, regions and country for internationally excellent and mobile researchers. BIOPOLIS will greatly enlarge the attractiveness of ICETA-CIBIO for top level researchers, thereby contributing for the overall attractiveness of the country and specific underdeveloped regions (Norte and Alentejo). This will help lure both the young and the well-established Portuguese researchers and mitigate the impact of brain-drainage at the Portuguese the scientific tissue.
iii. Fostering of a greater number of partnerships with the private economic sector, as a result of more frequent interactions and mutual trust between the ICETA-CIBIO, the agriculture, environment and
biodiversity business players.
iv. Improved capability to successfully compete for internationally competitive research funding. The increase of visibility of ICETA-CIBIO’s headquarters and poles will promote their attractiveness to joint
consortia of European excellence centres, by building capacity in terms of preparing applications and managing projects, and by contributing to deploy of a reference lab of international prestige that can act as a
vehicle to attract new collaborations.
v. Changes in the extant policies and practices for an open recruitment policy, gender balance, peer review, and doctoral training. The project will help consolidating the best practice in Europe, which will then be used as the standard recruitment
procedure in the centre.
vi. Contributing to the objectives of regional or national smart specialisation strategies. BIOPOLIS is well aligned and highly synergistic with the priorities defined as part of the smart specialization strategy at both
the regional (including NUTS II Norte and Alentejo) and national levels. The project will increase the capacity of ICETA-CIBIO to address several priority topics identified in the smart specialization strategies, mainly
those requiring competences in areas such as biodiversity, provision of ecosystem services, and environmental (bio)monitoring, agrodiversity and conservation, heritage and tourism.
vii. Conveying cutting edge technology for nation-wide Research and Education. This project proposes to open an interface office to help integrate, nation-wide, these new technologies in research and education. This installation will attract the interest of many players involved in science,
education, companies that are interested in such infrastructure and expertise.
viii. Contribution to ensure stability and sustainability of the agro-systems environment. By providing more accurate indicators for biodiversity and inform decision-making bodies and to private companies
in the assessment, minimization and compensation of the environmental impacts of infra-structure development.
ix. Sustainability of the measures beyond the project lifetime. The engagement with enterprises and other public and private entities in the areas of ecological inventory and monitoring, biodiversity management and
conservation with special interest for agricultural and game management, environmental impact assessment and natural resources valorisation, will assure the sustainability of BIOPOLIS and help guide its applied
research.
