On 29 March 2022, Joint Research Centre (JRC) policy colleagues and researchers at JRC Headquarters in Brussels and JRC sites across Europe (Geel (BE), Karlsruhe (DE), ISPRA (IT), and Seville (ES)), joined a virtual COST info session.
The session was opened jointly by Ms Sabine Henzler, Director Strategy, Work Programme and Resources (JRC.A), and Dr Ronald de Bruin, Director of the COST Association. Both Directors highlighted the ‘win-win situation’ of increasing JRC participation in COST Actions. Dr de Bruin emphasised that “COST Actions are fully open to researchers from the JRC. The JRC has already participated in several COST Actions, however, a stronger participation would benefit both parties. Moreover, scientists participating in the Actions and generally the scientific community would be able to benefit even more from the know-how and expertise of the JRC”.
Ms Judith Litjens, COST Policy Officer, gave a presentation on opportunities that COST provides to researchers based at the JRC, focusing on the different ways in which JRC scientists can get involved in COST Actions.
The presentation was followed by testimonials from two JRC researchers who are active as Working Group leaders in COST Actions.
Dr Ana Cristina Cardoso, participating in the COST Action ‘Increasing understanding of alien species through citizen science’ (Alien-CSI) described COST as an excellent tool for the JRC. Dr Cardoso highlighted the organisation of a joint COST-JRC workshop that her Action had organised on ‘cities, science and open data’. The outcomes of this workshop were published in the journal ‘Research Ideas and Outcomes’ and gathered many different contributions from COST Action initiatives and EU policies. The journal article included recommendations for both researchers and policy makers.
A previous COST Action, in which Dr Cardoso was also involved, steered the development of a new COST Action proposal in 2017, which resulted in the follow-up COST Action Alien-CSI.
As a COST Action participant, Dr Cardoso stated to have benefited from the flexibility of COST networking tools.
“To have benefited from the opportunity to organise two Action workshops, several Short-Term Scientific Missions (STSM), to publish in scientific journals, and to have improved the development of our own (i.e., JRC) tools. The Action has facilitated the improvement of a smartphone application, for example, but also the content and format through which the JRC provides data. Networking of research is part of our daily realities, and this works very well in the COST context.”
Dr Cardoso
Dr Biagio Ciuffo also shared his experience of participating in several COST Actions. He is currently involved as a Working Group leader in Wider Impacts and Scenario Evaluation of Autonomous and Connected Transport, (WISE-ACT)’.
Dr Ciuffo’s experience with COST dates back to 2009, when he successfully submitted his first COST proposal. When he joined the JRC afterwards, the JRC allowed him to stay in this Action as Working Group leader, as a result of which the JRC also reaped the benefits. Dr Ciuffo highlighted his participation in COST as an “extremely interesting experience”. By means of this Action, a very strong research community was created at EU level, which has survived until now. The participants from the 2009 COST Action are still in constant contact.
Dr Ciuffo pointed out that scientific activities that took place in context of the COST Action generated new waves of activities. While COST Actions require a significant investment of time, they have high potential and bring with them very motivated people.
Similar to Dr Cardoso, Dr Ciuffo successfully applied for a new COST Action WISE-ACT with some of the original COST Action participants. When asked to give an example of how COST Actions can benefit the JRC, he mentioned that he had hosted two STSMs at the JRC before the pandemic. Indeed, COST Action grantees can benefit from performing an STSM at the premises of any COST Action participants, including the JRC.
As a final statement, Dr Ciuffo strongly encouraged JRC participation in COST:
“Every JRC researcher should find a relevant COST Action to join. COST Action participants are very motivated. Even if you run a very small project at JRC, COST networking tools offer you the opportunity to increase the capacity of your research. It’s really a very good investment.”