Bioeconomy Marketplace at Vila Real December 19th 2017

To finish this year on the “knowledge transfer side” of the project, the team has attended an event organized by BCSD at Vila Real, 2h away from our lab. Sandra Aresta, the Knowledge Transfer and Dissemination Office has invited Joana Paupério and Sónia Ferreira, two of the researchers, to attend the event, and Rebecca Mateus, our MSc student, showed interest in joining as well.

This 1-day workshop aimed at sharing practical information about ongoing projects in the area of bioeconomy, in particular in agricultural production. The event included several presentations, including a pitch session from different companies. It also included a networking session and a brainstorm session about how to get value from ecosystems services. The agro-food sector is one of the areas were metagenomics has applications and therefore this event is an opportunity to meet companies with interest in the area in order to foster interactions with new business partners.

Being a small event (about 50 people), and attended by 4 EnvMetaGen people, this was a very good opportunity to interact with most of the participants. We learnt about national initiatives in bioeconomy, funding opportunities and ongoing projects in national companies, mostly in the North region of Portugal were CIBIO-InBIO is based. Through participation in different working groups during the brainstorming session the team members were able to interact with a very large group of people and increase the visibility of the project.

We were so involved in discussions all day, that we forgot to take a few pictures for this post! Furthermore, the researchers had a great time, found the event interesting and useful, and were excited about the idea of joining Sandra for other events of the same kind! Raising awareness for knowledge transfer couldn’t be any smoother!