Monday, 23 May 2022 Project STEP CHANGE is in full swing – Steering Committee Meeting at UP FAMNIT

Last week, Faculty of mathematic, natural Sciences and Information Technologies hosted a Steering Committee Meeting for STEP CHANGE, an international project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

A three-year project, with a funding just over 2 million euros is coordinated by the researchers from the Department of Biodiversity at UP FAMNIT. The project, launched in March 2021, will draw on the expertise of 11 partners from 7 European countries and Uganda Uganda (including Oxford University, Aarhus University in Denmark and Tor Vergata University in Italy), to increase the mutual responsiveness of science and society while boosting the capacity of scientific investigation over phenomena that cannot be completely seized within conventional disciplinary boundaries.

STEP CHANGE builds on the assumption that citizen science can play an even broader societal and scientific role than is generally acknowledged. The overall objective of the project is to explore the potential of citizen science and to formulate recommendations and instruments for better cementing this approach within R&I institutions as well as changing researchers’ mindsets on its value.

Through 5 Citizen Science Initiatives, the project partners obtain important information in the fields of health, energy and the environment. The project assumes active public participation in scientific or research projects - hence the term "Citizen science". In Slovenia, the initiative focuses on wildlife conservation in Slovenia, which will contribute to additional development of the Hunting Information System (HIS) and further the cooperation between leading researchers of game in Slovenia and the Hunting Association of Slovenia (HAS).

Representatives of all partner institutions attended a two-day meeting, held at UP FAMNIT, during which they reviewed current activities within all five initiatives and examined the public response in the countries where the initiatives are currently taking place.

"I am glad that after one year of online meetings, we were finally able to meet live in Koper. The meeting was an exceptional opportunity to get to know each other better and share invaluable experiences", concludes prof. Elena Bužan, the project leader.

The next STEP CHANGE Steering Committee Meeting will take place in November 2022 in Brussels, with participation of the European Commission representatives.

More information about the project: https://stepchangeproject.eu/