Within a series of Expert Group Meetings, a meeting was organized by FP7-funded projects IncoNet CA and IncoNet EaP on May 19-20 in Bonn, Germany. The meeting was a part of an evaluation of the outcomes of the major activities in 3 topics, i.e. Health, Climate Change and Energy aimed at provision of recommendations for the future of EU-CA and EU-EaP cooperation in the mentioned fields. The meeting was hosted by the Institute for Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University (UNU-EHS). Around 30 experts attended the meeting.
Armenia was represented by Tigran Arzumanyan, National NCP Coordinator, Seyran Kocharyan, NCP on Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing, and Arman Saghatelyan, representing Climate action, resource efficiency and raw materials.
Several research topics have been indicated during the workshop, and within the Health component, Seyran Kocharyan proposed a list of topics including cardiology, brain research, and rare diseases, including Mediterranean Fever. Other research topics include Infectious diseases (TB, HIV, emerging diseases), Neuro-degenerative diseases, Cancer research, Mental health, Diabetes, Metabolic syndrome, Obesity, Diseases of maternity and newborns/children, adolescents, and Bioinformatics.
Seyran Kocharyan described information dissemination activities of H2020 in Armenia which are via virtual portal, such as a subsection has been created in YSMU website, information sharing via YSMU mailing lint, discussions and other means of dissemination. According to him, funding resources should be made available for all beneficiaries and interested parties.
In the frames of cooperation means, collaboration opportunities with Russia, Japan and US were discussed. Armenia has over a 100-years history with Russia in that regard. However, Armenians are several millions in the USA. Thus, collaboration is conditioned upon Armenian Diaspora, whereas the same refers to France and Germany.
Tackling Innovation subsection, Seyran Kocharyan mentioned that Armenia doesn’t have world leading companies, such as Toshiba, Siemens, etc, but Armenia is strong with programming, and it could be very efficient to include programming in health issues, relevant software and mathematical modeling of biological system for researches can be applied as innovation in Armenia.
Talking about drivers of cooperation, he mentioned that young PhD students can be an important asset aimed at promotion and strengthening international cooperation.
Specialized associations’ role and congress must serve as a special portal where specialists will get to know each other.
The results of the meeting are anticipated to be presented for EU Commission confirmation.
