Report from the Micro B3 Final Conference 2-5 November 2015

The final Micro B3 conference, held at the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and Arts in Brussels, brought together representatives from 46 institutions in 16 countries. The programme gave a very good overview over what had been achieved in the project, where more than 80 peer-reviewed publications have been published covering the three b’s, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics and Biotechnology. The project is a large EC supported integrated project coordinated by Frank Oliver Glöckner, Professor of Bioinformatics at Jacobs University in Bremen, and also a member of the International Advisory Group of ERA-MBT.

It is more important than ever to get a better view of the biodiversity of the marine environment, to organise the huge collection of data being gathered, and not the least try to get agreements on how to access the data and use them for the benefit of utilising the marine bioresources. In this context the principles laid down in the Nagoya protocol and now debated in how to get the best Access and Benefit Sharing are very important, all aspects of which were well covered at the conference.

As part of the conference a workshop on ‘Collaboration across Academia, SMEs and Industry – Transforming Inventions into Innovations’ was held with representatives from both the academia and industry. Having marine biotechnology as one basic aspect of the Micro B3 project, ERA-MBT was invited to contribute, and Torger Børresen as invited speaker made the presentation ‘ERA-NET MarineBiotech – future potentials and collaboration between academia and industry’.

A full report from the conference can be found at this website https://microb3.eu/news/micro-b3-final-conference-brussels, where pictures are presented and presentations will be uploaded shortly.