COST head to speak on widening science participation
The COST Association, which is supported by Horizon 2020, has announced details of its participation in WIRE 2015.
The organisation’s president, Dr Ángeles Rodríguez-Peña, will contribute to a parallel session entitled ‘The impact of spreading excellence and widening participation at regional level’ on the final day of the conference taking place in the Latvian capital Riga next month. Her presentation will focus on the COST Excellence, Inclusiveness and Widening policy and how it contributes to spreading excellence and widening participation in Horizon 2020.
The COST policy focuses on encouraging excellence in science throughout Europe by creating opportunities for co-operation between researchers, engineers and scholars from COST member countries. Through bottom-up, open and excellence-driven COST Actions and activities, the policy encourages excellent researchers from less research-intensive countries, as well as from under-represented gender and early career status, to set up, lead or join COST Actions. It has been designed to counterbalance research communities’ unequal access to knowledge infrastructures, funding and resources while nurturing talent and creativity.
The WIRE 2015 conference, which takes place on 4-5 June, focuses on regional aspects of the implementation impact of the Europe 2020 strategy and on the revision of the research and innovation policy priorities in the post-crisis period.
The event also seeks to promote research and innovation investments in European regions and EU member states, to discuss new policy instruments for the programming period 2014-2020, and to highlight the potential of innovation and knowledge to narrow the innovation split among European regions and optimise Smart Specialisation strategies.
