Dear members of Eusea,
I am very happy to have been elected as president of Eusea in the General Assembly in Tartu.
Before outlining some future activities and strategies for Eusea I´d like to especially thank Leonardo Alfonsi for his excellent work over the past four years. The same goes for the two board members that also resigned before our meeting in Tartu – Dafna Efron and Livio Riboli-Sasco.
Looking ahead we could already see in Tartu that there will be busy times for Eusea. First of all we recognized a strong need for more communication from the board to the members but also among the members themselves. That was one of the results from the strategy session we had at our conference. We will discuss different possibilities for enhancing those things in the next board meeting and set up initial measures as quickly as possible. Second we have to manage the Horizon 2020-projects we´re in right now – NUCLEUS and PERFORM. There are several tasks starting in 2016 so that we will have to appoint project officers who will do the work. We will send out calls for applications in the next weeks. Third we will try to set up new connections with other networks and stakeholders in the European science communication area or strengthen the already existing ones. ECSA (European Citizen Science Association) and EUPRIO already approached us expressing their interest in cooperating more closely in future. Furthermore we have to assign a new director as Jan Riise is stepping down (as already announced in the newsletter in April).
So this was all about “How” we are going to do things but not so much about “What” new things we´re planning. Setting up new projects in which many members can take part was one big wish in the strategy session. And also writing some advisory papers to the European Commission – something we already started in the session about the European Researchers’ Nights.
So there is quite a lot to do for the board and me. But I think it is worth working for this wonderful network with its treasure of experiences and knowledge. In these times working on the European level seems more inevitable and important to me than ever before. Science and science communication can and should help to create a European society which is based on knowledge and creativity and not on populism and conformism.
So I would be very happy if we could all work together on these tasks! We will try to keep you all updated regarding opportunities to get informed and involved.
Best wishes
Markus Weißkopf
