Recap: DiverSea 2024 Annual Meeting in Athens

Between Tuesday, October 6th, and Thursday, October 10th, 2024 , DiverSea partners gathered in Athens, hosted by Ethnikon kai Kapodistriakon Panepistimion Athinon (NKUA) for the Annual Meeting. Over fifty participants from all 19 institutes in the consortium, along with other collaborators, shared insights from the first year of the project. DiverSea is an EU-funded Horizon project with an approximate budget of €9.7 million. Through seven work packages, the project will synthesize multiple research streams into a workflow that develops and refines new DNA-based monitoring technologies, integrates diverse types of data from emerging sources, and visualizes this data through a cutting-edge dashboard to facilitate its integration into policy and planning.

ReSEES Laboratory at the Athens University of Economics and Business is one of the partners in this project, with Prof. Dr. Phoebe Koundouri as the Principal Investigator. AUEB is leading the valuation of ecosystem services, science-industry-society knowledge transfer, and is currently spearheading the stakeholder engagement process to support the development of MARBIOSE.

During the general assembly, Prof. Koundouri presented on ReSEES Laboratory, AE4RIA - Alliance of Excellence for Research and Innovation on Αephoria’s and SDSN Global Climate Hub work on ecosystem service valuation. Mrs. Alice Guittard presented updates on the participatory process, its connection to the valuation study, the development of system dynamic models led by VITO, and outlined the upcoming knowledge transfer strategy.

The two-day meeting highlighted the work packages focused on data collection, analysis, and communication related to marine biodiversity.

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