Annual meeting of START and meeting with the European Commission on Horizon Europe
START – Centre for Sustainable Agrifood Systems – has contributed with concrete input to Horizon's evaluation when members of the START steering committee and researchers from Denmark's eight universities were in Brussels to meet with representatives from the European Commission.
Horizon Europe is under evaluation in 2023. The evaluation is the first phase of the last part of the programme (2025-27) and of the successor to Horizon Europe. With a view to contributing tangible input to the evaluation of Horizon, members of the START steering committee and researchers from the eight universities in Denmark travelled to Brussels to meet with representatives from the European Commission.
It was clear that the European Commission is under pressure to make sure Horizon Europe contributes as effectively as possible to the EU Green Deal. The targets of the deal are meant to ensure that the EU is climate neutral by 2050. START’s contribution is being followed with great interest by the European Commission, since the agricultural and food sector is responsible for up to a third of all emissions and is also one of the slowest transitioning sectors.
Long-term solutions in the areas of food and agriculture
START, the Centre for Sustainable Agrifood Systems, is a cross-disciplinary collaboration between Danish researchers from all eight universities in Denmark; Aalborg University, Roskilde University, the Technical University of Denmark, the IT University of Copenhagen, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen Business School and Aarhus University.
START has already come a long way since the steering committee's last visit to Brussels in 2022, during which START cemented its relevance to the European Commission in connection with Horizon Europe. The goal of STARTis for Danish researchers and their international colleagues to accelerate the development of long-term and sustainable solutions for the food and agriculture sector.
"Climate neutrality can only be achieved if all sectors contribute. The agricultural sector is big and an important part of the Danish economy. Danish universities therefore have a special responsibility to support the green transition and to provide research that contributes to innovation and to solutions to the challenges faced by the food sector," says Eskild Holm Nielsen, member of the START steering committee and dean at the Faculty of Technical Sciences.
START annual meeting
START has just held its annual meeting. The theme of the annual meeting was ‘Research impact through interdisciplinary collaboration’. A masterclass was held in collaboration with Wageningen University and Research (WUR) titled “How to improve your impact and establish European collaboration and to how get success in the Horizon Europe programs”.
The masterclass and the training session demonstrated how interdisciplinarity can increase value creation and the impact of research applications and research across specialist disciplines. The masterclass was facilitated by experienced researchers from WUR in collaboration with START HUB coordinators from the respective Danish universities.
START also aims to optimise collaboration on establishing HUBs across the universities. The ambition is for START to consolidate itself as a platform for collaboration across disciplines and as support for researchers' work on Danish and European applications.
Read more about START HUBs here
Read more about the START here