Projects TASCMAR, VIVALDI, GenTree and INFRASTAR receive France’s ‘Stars of Europe Trophy’

Yesterday afternoon, the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation awarded the EU-funded projects TASCMAR, VIVALDI, GenTree and INFRASTAR with the ‘Stars of Europe Trophy’ in a virtual ceremony.

The project TASCMAR has achieved a balance between protection and bio-exploitation of the Ocean’s mesophotic zone, which contains a potential resource of bioactive compounds for health and wellbeing products. 

The project involved five private partners covering pharmaceutical, cosmeceutical, nutraceutical, depollution and bioremediation, as well as a range of biotechnology sectors.

“The overall strategy was to provide each of the partners with chemical and biological resources in the hope of developing products available either immediately or in the short term for the market,” outlined last May Jamal Ouazzani, research director at the coordinating institute, the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

The project has contributed to paving the way for future endeavours related to the Horizon Europe framework programme’s mission ‘healthy oceans, seas coastal and inland waters’ as it has highlighted the potential of the seas and oceans in the discovery of new molecules, and how to exploit them in a sustainable way.

The project VIVALDI worked on shellfish disease prevention by understanding its causes and choosing safe locations for shellfish farming, designing new tools to detect diseases, and by inactivating pathogens.

The project GenTree has received one of the two special prizes awarded this year for its particularly successful research in increasing the knowledge of trees' genetic diversity for a more sustainable use of European forests. During the ceremony, the coordinator Bruno Fady highlighted as keys of the project’s success: an achievable but ambitious objective, a balance between the partnership and budget, and a very strong communication strategy.

INFRASTAR project trained a network of 12 researchers in managing concrete infrastructures fatigue, mostly in bridges and wind turbine towers.

The four projects received funds from Horizon 2020’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation between 2015 and 2020, and were managed by the Research Executive Agency (REA). TASCMAR, VIVALDI and GenTree were funded under Societal Challenge 2, while INFRASTAR was funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks.

The ‘Stars of Europe Trophy’ is a French award, created in 2013 by the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation to recognise the work of European research and innovation projects’ teams coordinated by a French institution. The winners are chosen because of the scientific quality and international dimension of their research. 12 projects have been awarded this year.

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TASCMAR

VIVALDI

GenTree

INFRASTAR

Mission area: Healthy oceans, seas coastal and inland waters