Almost twenty foreign researchers choose the Ecimat to develop their projects under the frame of the program of transnational access of Assemble Plus

Rui Faria, Francesca Raffini, Roger Butlin e Meghan Wharton da Universidade de Sheffield e Juan Galindo do CIM-UVigo

Researchers from several foreign institutions chose the Toralla Marine Science Station (ECIMAT), which is integrated the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC-ERIC) , to develop their projects in topics such as climate change, ecotoxicology, marine birds studies, cryopreservation of marine organisms or speciation processes in marine snails. Until now, ECIMAT, which is the main infrastructure of the Centre of Marine Research of the University of Vigo, have received nine researchers belonging to institutions of United Kingdom, Italy and Portugal, and other nine researchers will arrive between June and October. These researchers visited or will visit ECIMAT in the frame of the program of transnational access (TNA) of Assemble Plus (Association of European Marine Biological Laboratories Expanded), “a project that offers to researchers and technical staff from public and private institutions access to a wide variety of marine ecosystems, biological resources and experimental and analytical facilities of first level, distributed by all Europe”, as explains Fiz da Costa, local liaison officer of Assemble Plus at ECIMAT.

The European program covers the use of the facilities and services to the infrastructures included in the project for a maximum of two researchers, as well as the costs of the trip, accommodation and subsistence. “Although the majority of researchers prefers to develop their experiments under the modality of on-site access, the program of TNA of Assemble Plus allows also the remote access to some of the services of ECIMAT, such as the collection of marine organisms in the Sothern Galician Rías, the shipment of organisms of culture collection or the supply of cultivated marine organisms without the need of travelling to ECIMAT”, as details da Costa.

The program of transnational accesses has a total of seven calls and among the three announced until now, ECIMAT received a dozen of projects: three in the first two calls and six in the third call. The fourth call is now open until the 21st of June.

High degree of satisfaction of the visiting researchers at ECIMAT

The nine researchers that developed their work at ECIMAT in the frame of first two calls of the program of transnational access of Assemble Plus, declared a high degree of satisfaction with the services provided at ECIMAT. Francesca Raffini and Roger Butlin of the University of Sheffield highlighted “The outstanding support and infrastructure provided by ECIMAT has made it possible to sample and conduct experiments on Galician rocky shores, generating exciting new data.”

Some researchers even repeated their experience at ECIMAT, since their projects were accepted in two different calls. Likewise, all the participants in the program of transnational access give a presentation at the seminar cycle held at ECIMAT, live broadcasted in streaming and also available permanently in the webs of UVigoTV and CIM-UVigo.