Videos

The COST Young Researchers’ Forum was held on 11 and 12 March 2013 in Barcelona, Spain, as part of the FTP-c8 Conference ‘Inspiring Horizons – A new Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for the Forest-based Sector’.

This joint COST-FTP Forum gave Young Researchers the opportunity to present results of their research work, and share their knowledge with colleagues and industry representatives at pan-European level.

The final meeting of COST Action BM1205 was organised at the Department of Physics of the University of Bari (Italy). Over the past 4 years, the network involved 28 countries, Israel and Australia. The network allowed over one hundred scientists and young researchers to move around the world, giving them the chance to meet and work with new teams in different laboratories.

This event became increasingly interesting, having started as a small initiative for about 20 students. It gradually grew into a proper multi-event involving more than 60 students, 15 of them coming from all over Europe. Some of them explained why the conference was so important for their career.

The event hosted entrepreneurs, researchers and policy makers whose individual presentations and interventions during a roundtable debate focused on the main challenges behind technology transfer in today’s European Research Area. Several spin-offs resulting from COST CMST Actions were also showcased, as participants also reflected on the real benefits SMEs have by joining COST Actions activities.

The Green Engineering Camp (GEC) was a pilot COST Interdisciplinary Science Initiative (ISI) aimed at engaging specifically early stage researchers and investigators in real-life applications and intelligent and innovative uses of green ICT in order to boost knowledge transfer efficiently and to initiate new ideas and solutions to current and future challenges.

Cement-based materials (CBM) are the foremost construction materials worldwide. Therefore, there are widely accepted standards for their structural applications. However, for service life designs, current approaches largely depend on CBM strength class and restrictions on CBM constituents. Consequently, the service life behaviour of CBM structures is still analysed with insufficiently rigorous approaches that are based on outdated scientific knowledge, particularly regarding the cumulative behaviour since early ages. This results in partial client satisfaction at the completion stage, increased maintenance/repair costs from early ages, and reduced service life of structures, with consequential economic/sustainability impacts. Despite significant research advances that have been achieved in the last decade in testing and simulation of CBM and thereby predicting their service life performance, there have been no generalized European-funded Actions to assure their incorporation in standards available to designers/contractors. Therefore, the main purpose of this Action is to bring together relevant stakeholders (experimental and numerical researchers, standardization offices, manufacturers, designers, contractors, owners and authorities) in order to accelerate knowledge transfer in the form of new guidelines/recommendations, introduce new products and technologies to the market, and promote international and inter-speciality exchange of new information, creating avenues for new developments.