The Toralla Marine Science Station (Ecimat), the main infrastructure of the Marine Research Center (CIM) of the University of Vigo co-financed by FEDER funds (FEDER/FSE Galicia 2014-2020), forms, together with the Plentzia Marine Station of the University of the Basque Country, the Spanish node of the European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC), a European marine research infrastructure that brings together 29 research centers from nine countries. Getting to know the different lines of work of a center that brings together nearly 200 researchers and highlighting the importance of research and innovation for the marine sector in Galicia were the objectives of the visit that the director of the Galician Innovation Agency (Gain), Patricia Argerey, made this Thursday to the Toralla Marine Science Station (Ecimat).
The Vice-Chancellor for Research, Belén Rubio; the Director of the CIM and the Campus do Mar, Daniel Rey; the Director of the Ecimat, José Manuel García Estévez; the Head of the Spanish node of the EMBRC, Belén Martín; the Coordinator of the Management and Research Support area of the CIM, Charo de la Huz, and the Director of the Programs Area of Gain participated together with Argerey in this tour of the marine station’s facilities. The objective of the meeting was to discuss with the representative of the regional administration the possibilities of participating in a consortium, formed in 2017, which is part of the European Commission’s Research Infrastructures roadmap. “The idea is that the EMBRC will ultimately function as a single European center and that researchers and companies can have access to all the stations as if they were one,” explained Belén Martín of an infrastructure within which the CIM offers services, both to the research community and to the industrial sector, related to areas such as biotechnology applied to aquaculture or access to estuarine ecosystems.
Synergies that will allow you to access resources and projects
Being part of the EMBRC allows “to strengthen relationships with other partners to promote international projects”, added Rubio, who highlighted Gain’s support for the consortium, as well as the synergies that this consortium will generate, together with the University’s presence in an ocean observation network, both in the field of research and transfer. “Only by sharing knowledge can we obtain better results and be competitive”, added Argerey about a consortium that acts as a “lever to attract resources and high-level projects”.
In this sense, EMBRC constitutes “a very important launching platform, which puts us in contact with other researchers and other centers of excellence”, added the director of the CIM. Daniel Rey highlighted both the “flow of people and ideas” that makes this network of centers possible and the possibility that, within this network, “our researchers will be joining and leading projects”. In this sense, Rey recalled that around 25% of the projects of the Horizon 2020 community program in which the University of Vigo participates arose from participation in EMBRC.
Promote innovation in the business fabric
Rey also focused on the importance of being part of this European infrastructure in terms of the transfer and development of research that “can gradually transform the sector and give it a greater level of technological intensification”. In this sense, the director of the CIM pointed out the importance of biotechnology within a “strategic sector” such as the marine sector, an area to which he also referred to the director of Gain, who recalled that challenge 1 of the Galician Smart Specialization Strategy is “the valorization of our resources”, in this case marine resources. Argerey therefore underlined the importance of the “sea-industry chain, which begins with research”, as the first pillar for the sector to “become increasingly competitive”.
Source: DUVI
