Photography: Margret Wibmer
On March 8th, on the occasion of International Women's Day, the Cervantes Institute in Utrecht organized, with the Amsterdam Public Library (OBA), EUNIC Netherlands and the Institut Français des Pays-Bas, a debate program on the challenges of women in science and Spanish as a scientific language.
The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) collaborated in the development of the program together with the Association of Spanish Scientists in the Netherlands (CENL), the Iberia Club of the European Patent Office, the Czech Center and the Embassy of The Hague Austria.
The event was opened by the Spanish Ambassador to the Netherlands, Ms. María Jesús Alonso, and the head of the House of all Languages department at OBA, Roel van den Sigtenhorst .
In the debate, moderated by the director of the Cervantes Institute in Utrecht, Pilar Tena, participated as speakers the biomedical researcher and CENL president, Noelia Lozano Vidal, the neurobiologist and director of the Barcelona Center for Genomic Regulation, Mara Dierssen, and the astrophysicist and director of the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE), Francisco Colomer, as well as the artists Sonja Baümel and Markéta Baňková.
Lozano and Dierssen opened the debate by showing data on how women scientists still find a glass ceiling in their professional development and presented the possible causes that lead to this situation. Later, Colomer focused his talk on how the use of Spanish in science, in addition to English as a lingua franca, is necessary to support the development of scientific projects and consortia in Latin America. Baümel showed some of his works, in which he explores the human microbiota as part of our human identity, and Baňková read an excerpt from his latest book, in which he approaches natural sciences to children from fiction.
During the act, two videos about Margarita Salas, one of the greatest Spanish scientists of the 20th century, were also shown. In them, Salas talks about his discovery of the DNA polymerase of the bacteriophage virus phi29, which has a crucial application in biotechnology, and has a conversation with María Blasco about the importance of supporting and improving the scientific culture in the education of citizens.
In the second part of the program, the Dutch writer Margot Dijkgraaf presented her new book “Zij namen het woord. Rebelse schrijfsters in de Franse letteren ”(They took the floor. Rebel writers of French literature, Atlas Contact 2020), in which she portrays the French writers who have changed the history of literature.

The kick off meeting of the European Project Newsera, Citizen Science as the new paradigm for science communication, was held in Barcelona on the on 4th, 5th and 6th of February. The project has been funded by the European Commission through an H2020 RIA having a budget of more than 1.2 millions of euros.
For three years, academic experts in scientific policy and scientific advice and professionals in citizen science and communication - led by Science for Change (Spain) - will collaborate to support the European Union to co-design innovative strategies to improve scientific communication in European citizen science projects in order to improve their impact.
The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) will be involved in multiple aspects of the project, with special responsibility in improving the communication of citizen science projects towards policy makers (public and political managers at all levels of the administration).
The Newsera project thus introduces two new concepts: citizen scientific communication, understood as a way of communicating broader and more inclusive science, with an important role of agents in the generation and analysis of research results, and scientific citizen journalism, where all the agents involved define the social, cultural and economic frameworks in which the data collected, analyzed and communicated to ensure transparency and reliability.

The Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) participates in the European project ETHNA System funded by the European Commission. This H2020 project aims at developing and ethical governance system for research and iinovation organization under the principles of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). The governance system will build upon the Living Lab concept and the outputs of other RRI-related European projects.
Along 3 years, 10 partners from 8 European countries led by the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) will collaborate in the development, testing and implementation of the system in 6 of the consortium’s organizations: 2 universities, 2 technology centre and 2 funding organizations. The ultimate goal is developing an implementation methodology that could be adopted by any organization.
FECYT’s participation in the project is linked to the providing support in the design and implementation process due to its mission of strengthening the link between science and society, and promoting open science. Furthermore, due to the expected impact that such a governance system could have over the research staff, the links with the EURAXESS initiative, which provides career development support to researchers, will be key along the system’s design phase.
The Kick-off meeting of the project took place in Castellón in the 30 and 31 of January 2020 and was opened by the rector of UJI, Eva Alcón.

On December 18th, FECYT organized in Zona From Facebook (Madrid) an event to close the first edition of the REBECA (Researcher Beyond Academia), an intersectorial mentoring programme aimed at early stage researchers wishing to explore professional alternatives beyond academia with the support of highly skilled professionals linked to science, engineering, math, social sciences and humanities working in the private sector, public administration and third sector.
The event brought together more than 60 participants who exchange information about their experience in the programme and discussed the benefits of such resources for the professional development of research staff.
After closing the call for participants in May, the 46 pairs established have had several mostly virtual meetings to reflect on the competencies, skills and professional opportunities of researchers with the support of the programme’s documentation and a number of on-line meetings and training webinars.
FECYT is planning to implement along 2020 a second edition of this programme that has been designed and implemented under the umbrella of the European Initiative EURAXESS Researchers in Motion, and within the framework of the Horizon 2020 project EURAXESS TOP IV – Open EURAXESS in which FECYT participates in its role of national coordinator in Spain.

On October 29 and 30, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) collaborated, together with the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), in the organization of the first workshop on science, technology and innovation diplomacy that was held in the Spanish Diplomatic School for the 32 new career diplomats - 71st cohort.
In addition, FECYT presented to the diplomats the project “Using science for / in diplomacy for addressing global challenges-S4D4C” on European science diplomacy, in which FECYT participates as a partner to connect the different agents involved in science, and diplomacy and creating training material.
The new diplomats had the opportunity to meet the main actors of the Spanish R & D & I system and visited the National Oncology Research Center (CNIO), one of the most leading research centers in the world, where they had the opportunity to learn about the work of the scientists.
The conference was opened by the Secretary General of Coordination of Science Policy, Mr. Rafael Rodrigo, the Director of Cultural and Scientific Relations of AECID, Mr. Miguel Albero and the Ambassador - Director of the Diplomatic School, Mr. Fernando Fernández Arias. All of them stressed the importance of the inclusion of science and technology as a fundamental element of Spanish foreign action.