AQUA-TNET NEWSLETTER

March 2013

1. Aqua-tnet News

• Aqua-tnet Annual Event 2013 - Innovative and Creative Approach Continues to Inspire Aqua-tnet Network

3. Research & Education

4. Other

7. AquaTT Training News and Announcements

8. PiscesTT Jobs

 

1. Aqua-tnet News

Aqua-tnet Annual Event 2013 - Innovative and Creative Approach Continues to Inspire Aqua-tnet Network

Higher Education is essential for economic growth, global competitiveness and a civil society. However, similar to other sectors, Higher Education is having to address the challenges posed by globalisation and the growth of the Internet. Aqua-tnet is the pan-European education network that plays a leading co-operative role between higher education institutions and other partners such as further education and training organisations, sectoral associations, research institutions, and industry in the European aquaculture, fisheries and aquatic resource management sector.

At this year's Aqua-tnet annual event, which was held from 13-14 March in Istanbul, Turkey, over 60 people from across Europe attended to discuss lifelong learning, generic skills, pan-European accreditation of courses and much more. The two-day event provided an excellent opportunity to engage with issues within the network's domain that are important for the future of education and lifelong learning at a European level.

 

Anthony Camilleri from the European Foundation for Quality in e-Learning (EFQUEL) was the keynote speaker. His presentation, Innovating Our Way to a Utopian Higher Education Future, highlighted changes brought about by technology and innovation in Higher Education. “Technology-linked innovations are moving the Higher Education field forwards for a new generation,” he remarked. He also emphasised that unbundled higher education is expected to be a major trend, which is currently most visibly being driven by the emergence Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) run by consortiums of leading universities, which are rapidly increasing in popularity.

 

The question was raised as to how smaller universities would respond to free online courses such as these and how business models might need to change to focus on other elements of the traditional education package such as coaching, providing a supportive study environment, and dealing with assessment and accreditation, etc. Unbundling might also open the door to much more private provision. 

 

Throughout the event participants were encouraged to work with new Internet tools through the use of the online discussion forums such as the backchannel “TodaysMeet” and the project’s Facebook and LinkedIn pages. The participants were also invited to respond to the Istanbul challenge which aimed to link education with the architecture of Istanbul in general and the impressive meeting venue at Istanbul University specifically. Participants were invited to upload photographs of architectural features to a blog site and to explore architectural analogies in their focus on education. The participants were challenged to draw inspiration from the legacy of earlier generations and cultures and allow this to spark their imagination as architects of future knowledge and learning.
Members of the network were asked to reflect on the impact they are having on the skyline of aquaculture, fisheries and aquatic resources management education. They were also asked to consider what “architectural treasures” they will pass on to future generations of aquatic food producers.

 

Time was also allowed for core working group meetings on subjects such as MSc and PhD course cooperation, generic skills development, mobility, and innovation in lifelong learning. The event was brought to a close by an intriguing mix of presentations about other relevant initiatives and projects presented by individual participants. This highly productive and successful event provided partners with a great opportunity to network and establish even more useful contacts for successful future cooperation.  

 

For more information please check the Aqua-tnet website or contact the Aqua-tnet Secretariat at info@aquatnet.com.

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2. Programmes, Courses & People

To search for PhD, MSc and mobility opportunities and courses and to access information on your colleagues in Aqua-tnet3, please visit the Aqua-tnet3 interactive web portal available at http://aquatnet.djangofoo.com/. If you have any further additions or would like to make changes to your institution's information please contact Marieke Reuver at marieke@aquatt.ie

 

If you are a graduate and would like to post your request for an internship, or your company is seeking interns, please visit http://www.aquatnet.com/index.php/167/internships/.

 

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3. Research & Education

 

New Project Will Assess Level of Contaminants in Our Seafood

ECsafeSEAFOOD is a new €5 million pioneering project that will address the challenge of assessing seafood safety issues relating to priority contaminants that may be present as a result of environmental contamination. The project will evaluate the impact the presence of these contaminants is having on public health, leading to improved seafood risk management and increased public awareness.

Pollution of the oceans and climate change are giving rise to concerns not just about the status of the marine environment, but also about their impact on seafood safety and public health. As there is rarely a well-defined quantitative link between levels of contaminants in the marine environment and levels in seafood, there is clearly a need for increased research on the transfer of contaminants from the marine environment to seafood. ECsafeSEAFOOD will tackle and redress this knowledge gap.

ECsafeSEAFOOD, or to give the project its official title, Priority environmental contaminants in seafood: safety assessment, impact and public perception, is funded by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) of the European Union (EU) and led by the Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera (IPMA, I.P.), Portugal, and will run for four years. ECsafeSEAFOOD brings together a multidisciplinary consortium of 18 institutions from nine EU countries and Norway. The project officially kicked-off with a partnership meeting in February 2013 in Lisbon, Portugal.

For more information about this project, please contact Federico Cardona Pons, AquaTT (email: federico@aquatt.ie Tel: +353 1 644 9008)

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Myfish Project Presents Its First Year Results and Plans for the Future

The second Myfish project meeting took place in Charlottenlund, Copenhagen, Denmark from 5-7 March 2013. The aim of the meeting was to present the first year project results and to focus on the challenges to be addressed in the next three years of the project. This meeting also highlighted the crucial role of stakeholders in the process of defining the objectives for fisheries management strategies. It was the first step toward the outline of an effective stakeholder engagement strategy.

This second meeting of the Myfish partnership built on the 2012 Myfish meeting in Vigo, Spain where the project partners together with over 20 stakeholders defined the variants of Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), the constraints and the preferred management measures. The Charlottenlund meeting outlined the potential form and content of the Decision Support Tables, which will become important tools for stakeholders and fishery managers in making the trade-off between different objectives.

Myfish is an EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) involving 31 project partners from 12 EU countries. Myfish aims to define an operational framework for the implementation of the MSY concept in European waters. This should result in multi-species fisheries management plans for the project's regional case study areas, taking into account the environmental, economic and social constraints that are embedded within the different European and national policies.

More information and materials relating to the project are available on the Myfish website. If you would like to arrange an interview with the Myfish project team, please contact the Project Coordinator Anna Rindorf, email ar@aqua.dtu.dk.

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MG4U Training Course: "Basics Bioinformatics for Marine Microbial Genomics", 27-31 May 2013, Bremen, Germany

Applications are now being accepted for a theoretical and practical training course in bioinformatics "Basics Bioinformatics for Marine Microbial Genomics", which is being offered by the FP7 Coordination and Support Action "Marine Genomics for Users" (MG4U). The course will run from 27-31 May 2013, at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, and is supported by the FP7 project Micro B3 and operated by Ribocon, a professional provider of bioinformatics services and training.

The workshop is divided into an initial three-day module covering the basics of DNA sequence analysis in lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on sessions, and a two-day introduction to in silico (meta) genome annotation. The course is free of charge and five nights accommodation, catering during the course days and a social event are included. Participants must organise and pay for their own travel.

For more details on the course content and programme please visit the workshop webpage. The number of participants is limited and applications must be submitted online HERE by April 15, 2013. For further information or enquiries, please contact workshops@ribocon.com. 

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2FISH Partners Meet in Galicia to Finalise Training Course Modules

Partners from the EU-funded project 2Fish met in Galicia, Spain for a partner meeting on 12-13 March 2013. Discussions during the recent partner meeting centred on the finalisation of the training course modules which will be tested over the coming months.

2Fish is concerned with the development of training courses to support the fisheries sector. The project will culminate with a final conference which will take place in Italy in 2014 where the final modules will be presented to key stakeholders for uptake. Subject areas include regulation and legislation, developing a new seafood product, fundraising, the value chain for fish, traceability of fishery products, fishery tourism and boat carpentry.

The final modules will be freely available in all partner languages (English, Spanish, Italian, Danish and Norwegian) from the project website. To keep up-to-date with the latest activities join the LinkedIn group and Facebook group.

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COEXIST Partners Focus on Results at Final Project Meeting

The COEXIST project partners met in Rome, Italy on the 13-14 March 2013 to discuss and evaluate the project's final results.

COEXIST is an EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) multidisciplinary project which aims to provide a roadmap for achieving better integration, sustainability and synergies across the diverse activities now taking place in the European coastal zone. At this stage in the project, six geographically diverse case studies, representing the various conditions and combinations of activities in European coastal areas, have been analysed and the main conflicts and synergies among these activities have been identified.    

COEXIST is in its last phase of development and this meeting mainly focused on the specific final results of the project and how they are going to be delivered to the relevant stakeholders. These results include tools and techniques to help policy makers at all levels manage their coastal zones, and a best practice guidance document in which these different tools and techniques have been adapted and applied to the case studies. The project results will help its stakeholders to better deal with management conflicts in the European coastal zones.

“This has been a very interactive and fruitful meeting, all partners are completely engaged with the project and we will achieve all the objectives foreseen at the proposal stage,” said Øivind Bergh, COEXIST's coordinator.

All the project results will be publicly available on the COEXIST project website in July 2013.

For further information on the COEXIST project, please visit www.coexistproject.eu, or contact Emma Bello Gomez, Project Officer, AquaTT (emma@aquatt.ie Tel: +353 1 6449008).

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AQUAEXCEL Annual Partner Meeting 2013

AQUAEXCEL project partners will meet in Brussels, Belgium, on 9-11 April 2013.

AQUAEXCEL (Aquaculture Infrastructures for Excellence in European Fish Research) is an EU FP7 project that aims to integrate key aquaculture research infrastructures across Europe in order to promote their coordinated use and development. Through collaboration with 17 partners and 23 facilities, AQUAEXCEL offers access to top class research infrastructures for both basic and applied research, giving aquaculture research groups the opportunity to utilise AQUAEXCEL’s facilities.

For more information, please visit the AQUAEXCEL project website.

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YOUMARES 4: 11-13 September 2013 Oldenburg, Germany

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Norman E. Borlaug Leadership Enhancement in Agriculture Program Seeking Applications

Applications are requested from sub-Saharan African students conducting research on topics related to USAID's global hunger and food security initiative, FEED THE FUTURE, for the Norman E. Borlaug Leadership Enhancement in Agriculture Program (LEAP). The deadline is 14 June 2013. The focus region is sub-Saharan Africa. All topics related to agriculture (as defined by Title XII) and the research strategies of the Feed the Future initiative are admissible. The Borlaug LEAP fellowship program supports engaging a mentor at a US University and at a CGIAR center to support and enhance the thesis research and mentoring experience.  Awards are made on a competitive basis to students who show strong scientific and leadership potential. Funds are available for one year and cannot exceed US$20,000. For more information on eligibility criteria and to download the application, please click HERE.

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Call for Contributions: European Foundation for Quality in e-Learning (EFQUEL) Innovation Forum, Barcelona, Spain, 26-27 September 2013

The EFQUEL Innovation Forum (EIF) is the leading conference for practitioners in international quality and innovation in e-learning, training and development. The 8th EIF takes place at the Open University Catalunya in Barcelona on 26-27 September 2013. It will be a unique opportunity to meet other experts from Europe and other regions of the world. EFQUEL welcomes different types of contributions to the EIF2013: presentations (papers, best practices, results), interactive formats (workshops, learning cafés, discussion panels, etc), and posters. Read more about the topic to be addressed and download the form for submitting your contribution HERE. The deadline for submissions is 30 April 2013.

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Call for Abstracts: The International Conference "Re-Conceptualising the Professional Identity of the European Teacher: Sharing Experiences", Sevilla, Spain, 12-14 June 2013

The International Conference "Re-Conceptualising the Professional Identity of the European Teacher: Sharing Experiences" is intended for researchers and professionals in the field of Education, and aims to analyse from a international and interdisciplinary perspective the new skills that are required for teachers at those educational levels, as well as to discuss the problems in their daily teaching practice. Consequently, the conference attempts to stimulate the transfer of knowledge about teaching practice through the creation of common ground between the researchers and other professionals in Education in order to raise a useful proposal, and to encourage networking and international work groups for further study of the issues addressed during the Congress. Abstracts addressing the conference theme are invited from all fields of research on internationalisation and teacher training.

Contributions focused on EU context from colleagues all around the world are also welcome. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 14 April 2013. For more information about the conference and the submission of abstracts, visit the conference website HERE.

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Registration Open for Online Training Courses on the Use of Social Media for LLP Project Managers

Web2LLP project partners are launching a series of free online training courses about the use of web strategies and social media tools on 19 April, aimed at anyone involved in European projects supported under the Lifelong Learning Progamme. These courses are made up of five modules each lasting two hours which will be delivered via webinar sessions taking place at different times in April and May. There will be three such courses in English, French and Italian. To find out more and to register for one of these courses please visit the online course information. The number of people who can be accommodated is limited so early registration is encouraged.

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Call for applications: Marine Biological Sampling and Data Collection Course

Applications for the Marine Biological Sampling and Data Collection Course, which is being offered by Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) and the Strategic Marine Alliance for Research and Training (SMART) from 30 September to 25 0ctober 2013, are now being accepted. The course features four days of intensive offshore training on the national research vessel RV Celtic Voyager and the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group’s vessel the Celtic Mist in waters south of Cork and the Shannon Estuary. Seagoing surveys are supported by three days of preparatory laboratory practicals, lectures and demonstrations in GMIT. All other elements of the module are accomplished through student centred distance learning using online resources.Applications will be evaluated on the basis of attainment of an honours degree in a relevant subject area, postgraduate programme of study or research, or significant professional experience.
Places are restricted to 20 and will be allocated on a first come first serve basis Fees for the module are €750. For further information and submission of applications click HERE.

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e-Learning Undergraduate Level Certificate Course in Sustainable Aquaculture

The School of Biology of the University of St Andrew's and TheFishSite.com offer an e-learning undergraduate level Certificate course in Sustainable Aquaculture. This Certificate Course is aimed at those who wish to develop their skills and knowledge of the aquaculture industry, and those looking to enter the aquaculture industry who wish to gain a greater knowledge and a recognised qualification in order to promote their career prospects. The certificate course is available part time via a specific e-learning platform to allow maximum flexibility for students to complete their studies. Further information is available HERE. If you would like to sign up for this introductory course from the University of St Andrews, please ensure you submit your application by Friday 5 April.

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4. Other

Commission Launches Initiative on Sustainable Management of Marine and Coastal Areas

On 13 March the European Commission launched a proposal to improve the planning of maritime activities at sea and the management of coastal areas. The proposal, which takes the form of a draft directive, aims to establish a common European framework for maritime spatial planning and integrated coastal management in EU Member States, with a view to ensuring that the growth of maritime and coastal activities and the use of resources at sea and on coasts remain sustainable. To learn more about this proposal click HERE.

Insulating Buildings with Seaweed

For many coastal dwellers, seaweed washed up on the shore is nothing but a nuisance. But German researchers have found that this raw material has the potential to keep buildings well insulated. Together with industry partners, they have succeeded in turning this substance into a viable insulation material. Read this story in full HERE.

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Guardian Higher Education Network

The Guardian Higher Education Network aims to provide an online meeting place, discussion hub and resource of industry intelligence for the professionals that work in and with the Higher Education industries. It is an online space where higher education professionals can talk to one other and get advice and insight from peers and industry experts. The network features guest blogs, advice, and interviews, as well as regular live Q&As, bringing together panels of industry experts, innovative and market-leading practitioners and support agencies. To sign up to the network, click HERE.

An Avalanche is Coming: New Report on the Future of Higher Education

An avalanche is coming: Higher education and the revolution ahead, is a new report from the UK Institute for Public Policy Research on the future of higher education.

“An Avalanche is Coming sets out vividly the challenges ahead for higher education, not just in the US or UK but around the world. Just as we’ve seen the forces of technology and globalisation transform sectors such as media and communications or banking and finance over the last two decades, these forces may now transform higher education. The solid classical buildings of great universities may look permanent but the storms of change now threaten them,” said Lawrence Summers, President Emeritus, Harvard University, USA in his introduction to the report.

The full report is available to download HERE. Updates from the Commission on the Future of Higher Education are available HERE.

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Please check the Aqua-tnet calendar for a live update of upcoming events, courses and workshops

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AquaTT's Training News is a free monthly e-newsletter featuring the latest announcements, news, and opportunities for collaboration from the European education community. The e-newsletter also has a section dedicated to young scientists. Training News is an important dissemination channel for education and training opportunities for aquaculture and related sectors. CLICK HERE for the latest edition.

Please email news@aquatt.ie to submit your news which will reach over 6,000 international subscribers.

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PiscesTT Jobs is a free online recruitment service used by over 300 companies globally in Aquaculture, Fisheries and Marine Science. If you are interested in viewing or posting a vacancy please go to http://www.piscesttjobs.com/ or contact aquatt@aquatt.ie Subscribe at http://www.piscesttjobs.com/feeds/ for live RSS updates.

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About Aqua-tnet

This update is published by the Aqua-tnet Secretariat. For further information e-mail aquatnet@aquatt.ie. Previous editions are archived at aquatnet@aquatt.ie.

DISCLAIMER: AQUA-TNET provides this newsletter as a free service to its partners. Most of the information is provided by AQUA-TNET. Where it is not, the source of the news is provided in the text of the news brief or else AQUA-TNET attributes the news to the coordinating body as the "Data Source Provider". In no way does this newsletter intend to wrongly or inappropriately claim projects, news, etc. as its own nor is it responsible for incorrect information provided from other sources. The AQUA-TNET Newsletter is a dissemination tool and forum for both AQUA-TNET and its partners.