Biotechnology for the Environment, A Report on the Joint United States - European Union Celebration of a Decade of Environmental Biotechnology Exchange Activities for Early Career Scientists, Project ID: 0011751
The joint EU-US Task Force on Environmental Biotechnology held a workshop entitled, 'A Celebration of a Decade of Environmental Biotechnology Exchange Activities' on October 17, 2005 in Brussels, Belgium. This was a fitting venue since Brussels was where the EU-US transatlantic initiative originated. The workshop brought together former trainees who are currently active in the field of environmental biotechnology in order to (1) assess the impact of the past training activities; (2) to promote further collaborations; and (3) to highlight working group and task force activities in this field. Presentations by the early career scientists filled the meeting day (see Appendix I and II for meeting agenda and abstract book, respectively). Task Force members chaired the various sessions. An additional poster session provided an opportunity for more intensive scientific exchange. The day culminated with a formal dinner and gathering of all participants. Agencies supporting the activities included DOE, USDA and NSF. Funds received from the DOE were exhausted and USDA and NSF allowed the Task Force to use unexpended monies (via no cost extensions) to facilitate future fellowship exchange activities. Over the past ten years, there has been a high level of sensitivity for working collaboratively with European colleagues. This philosophy simply pervades each and every activity of the EU-US Task Force. Realistically, this means that there is a careful balance between the US and EU participation in all functions. The Brussels 'Celebration' workshop was no exception. The organizers anticipated funding more former U.S. trainees than actually attended the workshop and raised the necessary funds to accomplish this goal. However, the number of U.S. attendees needed to be tempered since the financial resources for our EU counterparts proved more difficult to obtain. In order to maintain the scholarly and political balance on the program of events, fewer U.S. attendees were invited. Details of the expenditure of DOE funds are provided in the Table 1. As indicated in the original proposal, funds were used to support both past trainees (Treves, Leigh, Buchan, Bender, Perez-Jimenez, Becker, and Methe) as well as Task Force members (Zylstra, Suflita, Wall). The general assessment by the trainees was that the past Task Force activities were crucial to their development as scientists. The prevailing feeling was that they wished that more individuals could profit from similar experiences. There was also a high degree of enthusiasm for the trainees to get involved in some way with the Task Force activities. That is, the celebration lead to the organization of our former trainees to serve in an advisory capacity for future endeavors. In addition, the gathering served as an opportunity to plan for another two week environmental biotechnology course at Rutgers.
- Research Organization:
- The Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-05ER64095
- OSTI ID:
- 940731
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ER/64095-1; TRN: US201004%%1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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