Dear member of the NSC-Community,
We hope this message finds you well.
In the past year, several changes have occurred in the NSC-community, which we wanted to summarize and signpost in this note. As a starting point, we completely updated all the communication activities, with now having monthly “NSC Update”-mails that replace the newsletter from the previous ten years. With this, we are eager to have more up-to-date information provided to you and give you the opportunity to share your news quicker than it was possible in the quarterly newsletter before.
A next landmark was that during the great NanoSafe-Conference in Grenoble, the NSC community elected the Coordination Team (NSC-CT) in its new constellation, Monique Groenewold, Eva Valsami-Jones and Andreas Falk, received support to serve as NSC-CT for another term of three years.
During 2023, some NSC relevant developments have been initiated, that have given us greater visibility and impact as a community, and which we wanted to summarize here:
The Cluster set up a new Task Force, with the role to review activities and represent our community in the European Partnership on Advanced Materials: members of the NSC contributed from the very beginning to the development of AMI2030 (Advanced Materials Initiative), which recently transformed into “Innovative Advanced Materials for EU” (“IAM4EU”; combining AMI2030 and 2DMI which is a follow-up of the graphene flagship). Based on the initial idea to maximize the impact of several years of safety research, bringing this into this new initiative, Flemming Cassee took action to represent the NSC in the core group of AMI2030 (the past 6 months he participated alternately with Adrienne Sips in the extended core group meeting on behalf of the NSC). Following this initiative, the NSC started a Task Force on Safe & Sustainable Advanced Materials which resulted in the following document “Roadmap Safe and Sustainable Advanced and Innovative Materials 2024-2030” intended to provide input into the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of “IAM4EU” and other relevant partnership programs. This roadmap includes the primary research areas relevant to safety and sustainability of both nanomaterials and other advanced and innovative materials, specifically:
- FAIR research output & (Meta) Data Management
- Integration of Safety into Innovation
- Integration of Circularity and Sustainability into Innovation
- Translation & Valorisation of SSbD
- Harmonisation and Standardisation
- Regulatory Preparedness and Governance
For each of these areas a description is provided of the current state-of-the-art, and unresolved aspects and emerging issues are identified, as well as the needs to close the gaps within each area. An advanced draft of this document has been shared with the Steering Group of the NanoSafety Cluster for review. Our next priority will be to bring the roadmap to the attention of relevant stakeholders such as IAM4EU and relevant DG’s of the European Commission.
Cross-project-collaborations in the topics of the NSC-WGs: the NSC working groups are THE place where the cross-project interaction is facilitated. Hence, any ideas and topics concerning (i) Education, Training & Communication; (ii) Research Output management, FAIRness & Sharing; and/or (iii) Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD), Innovation & Regulation shall be brought to the attention of the WG Chairs either in the meetings they organize, or directly by email, to enable WG-wide interaction.
The organizational structure of this collaboration is given by the so called “Sister Projects’ Collaboration Groups: these groups will enable an easy visibility for the (EC-supported) collaboration between projects that have received funding under the same call-topic (e.g., NMBP-15, NMBP-16, Digital-Emerging-35, Resilience-calls, etc.).
Furthermore, several Events shall be mentioned, that bring together the NSC community and are an effort to foster future collaborations:
- ANTHOS’24 – 4-7 March 2024 – The “Advanced (Nano)Materials and Technologies: science, research & innovation for safety and sustainability” Summit 2024 (ANTHOS 2024) aimed to promote the advancements in technological innovation & research results on Safe-by-Design (SbD) for advanced (nano)materials and beyond. This summit served successfully as a platform for bringing together (f2f and online) 164 leading experts in Safe-by-Design (SbD) and Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design (SSbD) from projects funded under the H2020 and Horizon Europe initiatives.
- IndTech 2024 – Namur, 3-6 June 2024; it is envisaged to organize a NSC-booth at this event and – if possible – run a specific session at the Industrial Technologies Conference.
- MATERIALS Week 2024 – Limassol, 17-21 June 2024 – incl. YoungScientists Forum; the event will be an opportunity to strengthen the collaboration and the NSC community. The event is organised by 5 sister projects on „characterisation and visualisation“ (HORIZON-CL4-2022-DIGITAL-EMERGING-01-35: Advanced characterisation methodologies to assess and predict the health and environmental risks of nanomaterials (RIA)).
- NanoTox 2024 – Venice, 23-25 September 2024: The 11th International Conference on NanoToxicology – NanoTox 2024 – will take place in Venice on 23-25 September 2024. NanoTox is a forum aimed at personnel from research and academic institutions as well as from industry, governmental agencies, and other relevant organisations.
The next NSC Steering Group meeting (the formal bimonthly gathering of the project coordinators and/or their nominated representative, the Working Group-chairs, Early Career Researchers, program committee representative and Coordination Team) will take place on-line 24 May 2024, 10:30-12:00 CEST.
Thank you for your continuous support and for your contributions to further develop the NSC-community as a core-asset for all stakeholders.
We will do our best to move the NSC community forward and further strengthen the impact of our cluster within Europe and globally. As always, for any questions or suggestions, please contact us at info@nanosafetycluster.eu
With kind regards,
The NSC Coordination Team (Eva Valsami-Jones, Monique Groenewold, Andreas Falk)
Connect with us on social media:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7471509/
- The NSC on LinkedIn is a closed group. Every person that is a member of the group can post there. For doing it, go to the NSC group and write a new message. It is not possible to tag the NSC using a handle.
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/EUNanoSafety
- Please tag the NSC in your tweets if you want to reach out the NSC community: @EUNanoSafety
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nanosafetycluster5710
If you want to upload a video to the NSC YouTube channel, please send an email to info@nanosafetycluster.eu