First Spanish-Chinese Workshop of the Centre of Excellence for Plant-Environment Interactions (CEPEI) Held

The First Spanish/Chinese Workshop of CEPEI was held virtually last 31st May and 1st June 2021. This event was planned as first CEPEI’s initiative and it was scheduled last year (2nd March 2020) in Madrid hosted by the CBGP (UPM-INIA/CSIC). However, due to the COVID-19 situation it was postponed and finally celebrated online last week.

 

The event was shared between the 3 CEPEI’s joint institutions and took place in 2 half-day sessions. The workshop brought together CEPEI centers’ researchers and invited speakers and count on over 250 attendees. CEPEI Workshop was opened by the UPM Rector (Guillermo Cisneros); the IGDB, PSC and INIA Directors (YANG Weicai, ZHU Jiankang and Esther Esteban); and the Head of EU Affairs - Bureau of International Cooperation of CAS (Qiang Fang).

 

The scientific lectures covered the research areas of CEPEI and the institutes (CBGP, IGDB and PSC) integrated in this initiative: Computational/Synthetic Biology and Genomics, Plant Adaptation to Environmental Changes, Improving Plant Responses to Biotic Stress and Empowering Plant Nutrition. Thirteen keynote researchers took part as speakers:

 

- Yang Bai, Qi Xie, Yuling Jiao, Jian-Min Zhou and Xiangdong Fu from IGDB
- Chanhong Kim, Chao-Feng Huang and Mingguang Lei from PSC
- Krzysztof Wabnik, Mar Castellano, Emilia López, Antonio Molina and Mónica Pernas from CBGP

 

The event closure was on the Vice-President for Entrepreneurship of UPM (Claudio Feijoo) and the Deputy Director General for Internationalization of the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (Jose J. Sánchez).

 

This was the first CEPEI open event. The joint Center has currently ongoing several granted collaborative actions coming from the 2020 expression of interest call that resulted in the section of 5 collaborative projects on Plant Response to Biotic Stresses, Plant Adaptation to Environmental Changes and Empowering Plant Nutrition.

 

CEPEI offers a unique opportunity for sharing knowledge and training and for the development  of scientific careers. CEPEI also aims to use this collaborative structure to participate in EU programs, bilateral calls, and other EU-China initiatives, with the aim of contributing to the development of a more sustainable agriculture.