Last June, internal communications at CREAF turned over a new leaf. On the first day of the month, 50 eager researchers and support staff opened CREAF vermuts, a series of themed internal symposiums to share the centre’s latest research on a specific topic.
Addressed to the whole of CREAF staff, these sessions are an opportunity not only to learn and be up-to-date with each other’s work, but also to network and discover connections and potential synergies with fellow colleagues and among different projects.
At the inaugural Forestry ‘vermut,’ 16 experts got the ball rolling. Moderated by CREAF’s scientific coordinator, Alicia “Alis” Pérez-Porro, and encouraged by the session’s ambassadors –conveniently appointed for the occasion—, Josep Maria “Tete” Espelta and Francisco “Paco” LLoret, they were asked to answer these questions: What do I do? Why do I do it? What’s the social impact of my research?
Following a 5+5 format –5-minute presentation, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A and discussion—speakers covered a wide variety of topics:
- Forests resilience assessment
- Forest management and regeneration
- Biodiversity, plague and forest health monitoring with citizen science
- Forest ecosystems modelling
- Impact and predictive modelling of climate change
- Impact of pollution
All the presentations were then transformed into beautiful mind maps by Laura Fraile, art and design expert at CREAF’s Communications Office.
The ambassadors concluded that there are lots of connections between the different forestry research approaches that are currently being carried out at CREAF. Also, they identified research opportunities to broaden the scope towards a global scale, and to further explore areas such as pollution or prediction of climate change consequences under different scenarios.
At the closure, foresters enjoyed some savoury appetizers and raised their glasses of vermouth to toast many more CREAF themed ‘vermuts’!
This action is part of the Severo Ochoa “ULandscape” funded in 2019 by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation to support Research Centres of Excellence.
