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Summary Report on the Participation of HunEx BioMed in the Development of the European Researchers Abroad Link (ERA-Link) Online Survey |
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In December 2003, at the Conference on Transatlantic Mobility of Researchers, organized by the European Commission and held at the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C., the idea was conceived of a survey to map out and track down European researchers working in the US. Dr. Alessandro Damiani, Science, Technology, and Education Counselor for the EU, spearheaded this project [more].
Some of the most important items on the HunEx BioMed group’s agenda have greatly overlapping fundamentals with the above, although for a smaller scale: it targets the Hungarian, rather than all European, research community in the US. Of course the BioMed group’s agenda is not limited to biomedical academics; our interest extends to other biomedical professionals, including those in administration, praxis, and the private sector. In any case, because of the shared interest, thanks to Hungarian Embassy’s awareness of the BioMed group (EU Embassies were asked by the EC to delegate researchers representing their countries at the meeting and reception), both members of the Hungarian delegation were avid BioMed group members: Drs. Lajos Baranyi and Zoltan Mari.
The meeting was hosted by Drs. Damiani and Mary Kavanagh Counselors, Science technology and Education, at Delegation of the European Commission on 9/30/04. The meeting was held from 5 to 6.30 PM, followed by a reception. Also participating were Melanie Kitchener, Contract Manager, and Ben Ward, Project Manager from The Evaluation Partnership Limited, a UK firm, charged with developing and managing the "trial run" of the ERA-Link, the center of which is a survey. Evaluation Partnership specializes in surveys. The main purpose of this meeting between EC officials, representatives of Evaluation Partnership and researcher delegates from European nations was to brainstorm about the future role of ERA-Link and help polish the survey to ensure it best serves its function, which is the determine the expectations and needs of the European researchers in the US so that the ERA-Link can be designed to respond to these needs. Along these lines, European researcher attendees of this meeting were asked to fill out the survey draft and then make specific comments and recommendations. Their comments were then taken into account in improving the "trial run" survey. The meeting was highly successful in that virtually all attendees remarked or added in a constructive manner and at the end of the meeting the survey proposal indeed was substantially bettered, as was acknowledged by everybody. The final product is now on-line and can be viewed until the survey closing date at http://www.evaluationpartnership.com/surveys/eralink.htm.
Especially during the informal discussions during reception, Counselor Kavanagh expressed her great interest in the HunEx portal and the work of the BioMed group. Experience and thoughts were exchanged in regards to areas of shared interest and future collaboration between the BioMed group and the EC were discussed.
Both LB and ZM were grateful for the opportunity to participate and we hope that our contributions during this session will help both the purpose of the EC to produce ever more useful data on European researchers working in the US in order to advance policy accordingly and the purpose of the BioMed group to tap into the resources of its larger counterpart in order to establish and further define itself, its roles, and future direction.
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To further this project, Dr. Sándor Végh met with Dr. Damiani and Silvia Soncini on January 14, 2005, to discuss the interfacing of the ERA-LINK and HunEx databases and the future collaboration of the Delegation of the European Commission and the HungarianAmerica Foundation."
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