The sixth meeting of Senior Officials on Science and Technology (SOM) of the joint EU-CELAC initiative on Research and Innovation (JIRI) was held on March 14, 2017. It confirmed the need to guarantee a strategic regional association in research and innovation through the development of the EU-CELAC Joint Research Area. To this end, the Senior Officials committed themselves to the dimension of research infrastructure as one of the three strategic pillars of this Common Research Area (CRA).

The group is chaired by the Directorate of Research and Innovation of the European Union (EC-RTD) and Dr. Fernando Amestoy, Executive Director of the Scientific and Technological Park of Pando, Uruguay, nominated by the CELAC Presidency to represent the member countries and approved by consensus of all representatives.

The general objective of this working group is to align and harmonize the coordination of regional (bi) policies and share good practices in the development of policies and in the mapping of research infrastructures, in order to make the best use of those available. intra and extra regionally.

Specific Objectives:

 

1. Ensure bi-regional coordination of policies.

 

2. Exchange good practices in the development of these and the mapping of research infrastructures.

 

3. Agree on priority work areas.

The list of main activities is as follows:

1. Survey of national antecedents on the information systems used for the elaboration of inventories and catalogs of scientific-technological equipment, developed software, regulations, procedures, etc.

2. Evaluate alliances between technology centers, development of clusters or other type of associativity to look for synergies between research infrastructures in order to boost the competitiveness of CELAC countries according to their socio-productive specificities.

3. Prepare proposals for the development of processes that promote synergies between research groups through Open Science and Open Innovation mechanisms.

4. Generate a virtual regional coordination space for the exchange of best practices, lessons learned and mechanisms for accessing research infrastructures.