Date: 13/09/2007
On September 13th, 2007 the first trans-regional Information and Training Workshop took place in Riga, Latvia – at the international Baltic Dynamics’07 conference.
The event was organised by the two European initiatives, SMEs go Health and Match2BioSMEs, whose networks consist of experienced partners from more than 27 European countries. Small and medium-sized enterprises, research institutes, universities, industry and associations, representatives of bio-clusters or bio-incubators, working in the field of Health and Biotechnology and interested in EU funding for research & technology development were attracted to attend the workshop. More than 60 participants from various countries registered for this one day and free of charge event.
After the opening of the day by Mrs. Diana Krievina, Latvian Technology Center and host of the workshop, Mrs. Liene Bigača, Latvian State agency "Public Health Agency", gave an overview on public health and knowledge based bio-economy in Latvia, Dr. Frank Heemskerk, RIMS, Belgium, subsequently introduced the 7th EU-Framework Programme and its funding opportunities, explained the main financial and legal rules of participation and emphasized the specific possibilities and support for SME and SME associations to participate in EU-funded research projects.
Mrs. Caterina Buonocore, APRE, Italy, showed the life cycle of an FP7 project, from the idea to the end of a successful project, explaining the writing process and negotiation phase. She pointed out how researchers can build a consortium and find partners with the help of different tools – like the SMEs go Health database and its matching facilities. The afternoon was divided into two parallel sessions where participants were encouraged to give their input: the first one led by SMEs go Health for the “Health” (red biotech) sector and the second led by Match2BioSMEs for the white and green biotech sectors.
To summarize, the workshop was not only a full success, but also a perfect opening for the Baltic Dynamics’07 conference which followed on September 14th-15th. This international conference attracted more than 400 participants from 35 countries.
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