A report on the RRI-related workshops and sessions during the Ecsite Annual Conference 2016.

Now that the call for proposals for the next Ecsite Annual Conference 2017 just opened we think it is the right moment to sit down and reflect on the past Ecsite Conference 2016 in Graz and what exactly we learned from it.

Science centres, museums and other science engagement organisations are finding themselves in the middle of the transformation of the science&society relationship. With the concept of RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation), actively promoted by the European Commission, the ongoing process of aligning research and innovation with societal needs and expectations is one of the most important science policy trends in EU funding scheme Horizon 2020. Does it have any implications on the work of science engagement organisation? What kind of role are they ready to take up in this transformation? These and many other questions were the main themes of several sessions and workshops during the Ecsite Annual Conference 2016 in Graz, Austria. The conference offered a great platform to discuss and share concrete experiences with RRI that are relevant specifically for science engagement organisations.

A report on the final NanoDiode working conference held on 31.05.2016 in Brussels, Belgium.

It was a great pleasure to be able to attend the final NanoDiode working conference held in Brussels on the 31^st of May 2016. The program was quite promising and according to the description, the conference was supposed to “bring together a broad range of stakeholders to discuss the effective governance of nanotechnologies”.

Is the research and innovation system really favorable to perform Responsible Research and Innovation?

Marian Deblonde, senior researcher at the department of Sustainable Materials Management within VITO (Flemish Institute for Technological Research) presents the challenges of the FoTTRIS project of which she is coordinator. The aim of the project is to develop methods to support researchers and innovators to co-desgin projects with other stakeholders and scientists from other disciplines in order to move towards a challenge-oriented science.

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Ralf Schreck, from LabTimes, conducted an interview with the RRI Tools co-ordinator, Ignasi López Verdeguer ('la Caixa' Foundation), about RRI and the RRI Tools project, which was initially published in LabTimes on Friday 20 February 2015. LabTimes kindly authorized RRI Tools to reproduce this interview here. 

Bringing together scientists, citizens, policy makers and businesses to solve society's complex problems is the goal of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). The abstract concept now gets more specific. We talked to RRI Tools co-ordinator, Ignasi López Verdeguer.

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