More than 70 participants joined the WIDER UPTAKE kick-off on the 18th of June 2020.
The meeting was held as a Teams-meeting, whilst the original plan was to meet in Hamar, Norway.
Partners from five different countries and a variety of affiliations made good use of available digital technologies and created a group feeling throughout the day. Even if we couldn’t be physically together, we shared a lot of information about the planned activities and the study cases in the project.
– The presentations truly inspired me, they showed that, despite different cases and approaches, the challenges we face are the same, and we will find new solutions through collaboration across countries, says Maria Barrio in Sintef. – Now it is up to us to all of us to make sure that our work lives up to the expectations, and that the new knowledge reaches the target audiences.
Christel Millet, the project officer for WIDER UPTAKE at the European Commission, joined the meeting from Brussels and reminded us about the importance of delivering good scientific quality, about cooperating across ongoing European projects on the same topic and, finally, about the crucial ambition to create impact in the society with our work.
– I am happy the virtual format of the kick-off worked well, says Herman Helness, coordinator. – We had been looking forward to meeting all the project participants in person, but the virtual format seemed to work to everybody’s satisfaction.