Eckart’s Corner – Words from the Secretary General #1-2021
Dear member and friends of the Global Innovation Family,
Unfortunately, the pandemic is still “on” in most countries. I sincerely hope that you are safe and well and that you get through this turbulent time in the best way possible.
A lot has happened in the WAITRO Secretariat. Both offices have been working hard over the past few months to provide you with more and upgraded opportunities.
For example, a new version of SAIRA has been released – just in time: The WAITRO Innovation Award 2021 has been announced. We should build on the success from last year and further increase our cooperation by using SAIRA to put exciting project ideas together. Then apply for the award and thus support SDG 2 with a good joint project proposal. I am looking forward to receiving your applications!
The WAITRO Secretariat offers info sessions and workshops on international cooperation under Horizon Europe and with SAIRA, members can find the right partners. This is especially useful for calls, which are targeted at cooperation with countries outside of Europe.
In the WAITRO Secretariat, there had been some changes lately: Xin Yao, Mona Kern and Linn Sommerhoff have left for other opportunities, and I want to thank them for their excellent work and wish all of them success in their future projects. At the same time, I would like to present several new members of the team: Andrea Santos, Sarah Grossmann and Karla Garcia in the German office and Yiwen Jiang in the China office. If you are interested in an overview, you will find a list of all our team members here.
On the Executive Board there has also been a change: my personal thanks go to Dr. Ahmad Fadzil Mohamad Hani, who served as Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific on the WAITRO Executive Board tirelessly and very actively since 2019. He retired at the end of March.
According to the rules, by leaving SIRIM he had to resign from the Executive Board as well. Now all members in the Asia and Pacific region are encouraged to nominate a suitable senior person from their organization (preferably President or CEO). Nomination letters, accompanied by a CV, should be sent to me by July 31st at the latest. If there are any questions from members in this context, please don’t hesitate to send an email directly to me: e.bierduempel@waitro.org
I am happy to see our Global Innovation Family growing steadily. New members, full and associate, joined from Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Germany, Kenya, Nigeria, Spain, Thailand and Uruguay. I look forward to seeing them cooperating and benefiting from the services and programs WAITRO offers for its members.
At WAITRO, we are always interested in new, active members. For that purpose, we also need your help: if you have contacts to other research organizations, please spread the word, inform them about WAITRO and invite them to apply for membership. Remember: until end of 2022 it is free of charge, so one can try out a membership without any financial cost!
Finally, compact news with links to more detailed information are available In the latest WAITRO Newsletter. A PDF version of it is available in the download section of the website. If you don’t receive them automatically yet, you can sign up for the newsletter here.
And how do you like our newly designed website? If you have a comment on it, have a general question or want to give a feedback on anything, here is the link to our contact form.
Please stay safe,
Eckart
About the Author: WAITRO
