Mission and Vision
The project “Bringing Excellence to Transformative Engaged Research in Life Sciences through Integrated Digital Centres – BETTER Life” will establish a European Digital Centre of Excellence for fostering Socially Engaged Research (SER) in Life Sciences, as well as seven regional centres operating in their surrounding ecosystems. This inter-institutional support structure addresses the lack of collaboration between early career researchers and the non-academic sectors by designing tools, standards, and framework conditions under the umbrella of the EU centre and implementing these solutions in the regional ecosystems. The project aims to support the development of inter-institutional capacities by establishing an EU BETTER Life coordination centre that will generate transferable tools and standards. At an intra-institutional level, the project creates local centres guided by a framework to follow the regional customization implementation. At an individual level, the regional centres develop capacities by training early career researchers and establishing a community of practice in each surrounding ecosystem.
The main objectives
- To consolidate, through joint efforts from widening and non-widening countries, a strategic vision for the EU BETTER Life Centre that is committed to long term sustainability, aiming to stand as a world reference in sociallly engaged research in life sciences.
- To build the intra- and inter-institutional capacities to foster societally engaged research in life sciences through the resources, guidelines, network cooperation, and policy designs at a regional and international level.
- To build the individual capacities for boosting the social impact of the research developed by early career researchers by providing the tools, skills, knowledge, collaboration, and inter-institutional support to design, development, and valorisation of research engaged with their surrounding ecosystems to contribute to the delivery of EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, the European Green Deal, and the Sustainable Development Goals.
- To consolidate EU BETTER Life as a world reference through the development of pioneering transferable tools to foster SER in life sciences at an individual, institutional, regional, and international level allowing all society actors to work together in the development of solutions that are beneficial and accepted for all.