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APRE is a non-profit research organisation created in 1989 as a joint initiative of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) and of some public and private bodies, to meet the growing demand for information on European research programmes.

First reality of its kind, APRE' mission is to support the scientific and the industrial communities along the path to Europe and beyond, by providing information, training and assistance activities on the Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation of the European Commission. APRE is at the heart of a network of more 150 members from the academia to private sector, including: Public and Private Research centres, Universities, Scientific Parks, Public Administrations, Trade associations, Finance, Chambers of Commerce, Technological Districts, enterprises: http://www.apre.it/en/what-isapre/apre-members/

APRE hosts all the HORIZON EUROPE National Contact Points (NCP) contributing to the successful participation and implementation of the Research and Innovation projects. APRE is also EURAXESS Bridgehead Organisation for Italy supporting the researchers’ career. In order to strengthen the networking potential and raise the awareness of European research locally, APRE has established a network of 13 Regional Help Desks throughout Italy. In addition, APRE Liaison Office in Brussels acts as a strategic hub intended to promote and involve more effectively its Members straight into the heart of EU Research and Innovation policies and programmes. APRE is coordinator of the GIURI Group (Informal Group of the Italian Offices in Brussels), an informal platform of more than 50 Italian Brussels based representation offices representing research organisations, business organisations, national/regional institutional bodies and financial intermediaries, actively dealing with EU R&I policies.

APRE Projects Department directly participates in the HORIZON EUROPE calls through its expertise: project management, training and information, stakeholder engagement and co-creation, dissemination and communication, policy analysis, innovation management and exploitation, responsible research and innovation and international cooperation. Follow #apreprogetti on APRE social media channels.

APRE is GenB coordinator and responsible for the smooth implementation of the activities. APRE, together with FVA, is responsible for developing and implementing GenB activities with students, families, teachers and multipliers in Italy. APRE contributes to GenB youth engagement, education of multipliers, mobilisation and co-creation of innovative approaches, strategic dissemination and communication to promote the circular and sustainable bioeconomy at national and European level.

APRE Team in GenB Project (genb @ apre.it)

Coordinator

Chiara Pocaterra is leading the APRE Projects Department since 2018, which has the aim to assure the APRE’s successful participation in Framework Programme funded projects and their smooth implementation, coordinating more than 20 people.
Chiara Pocaterra has coordinated several Framework Programmes’ projects in the bioeconomy sector mainly supporting the promotion, awareness raising, education and communication addressing challenges and opportunities, engaging the quadruple helix stakeholders in the domain in particular the young generation.
She is one of the two authors of the book for kids “What’s Bioeconomy” published in 2021 and translated in fifteen EU languages and Ukrainian.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiarapocaterra/

Management

Flavia Fusconi has a degree in Law with a specialisation in European Law. She is currently a Project Manager in APRE working on National and Horizon 2020 projects, such as BioGoal, FNS-Cloud, FoodSaftly4EU (as Social Media Manager), and FoodTrails (Exploitation Manager). She also manages Horizon Europe projects in Cluster 6, including GenB (Coordination and management), B-THENET (Co-coordination and management of dissemination, communication and exploitation activities). Flavia leads the valorisation activities in APRE and is part of the GDPR group in APRE.
Previously, at University of Bologna-UNIBO, she worked as a Project design officer in the bioeconomy and Food sector mainly supporting academic research at European level.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/flavia-fusconi/

 Educational activities

Laura Mentini is a Project Manager in APRE. She has an academic background in Education Policies and Global Development (PhD and Erasmus Mundus Joint Master) from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and experience in the EU Commission (DG Education, Youth, Sport and Culture), with Erasmus+ international programmes. Previously, she worked as a consultant at UN FAO agency (Rome) and collaborated with NGOs and bottom-up projects related to informal education and active citizenship in developing contexts.
https://it.linkedin.com/in/laura-mentini-690857110

Biomass Technology Group (BTG) has specialised in the conversion of biomass into fuels, energy and bio-based raw materials for the past 30 years. BTG is an independent, private company.

More than 20 spin-off companies and more than 10 foundations originate from BTG. Examples are BTG-Bioliquids and BTG-neXt. That already shows how innovative and successful BTG is. Our flat organizational structure contributes to this. Our team of about 25 professionals often talks to each other and that is how the best ideas arise.

We want to be a leader in bioenergy, biofuels and raw materials for the biobased economy. We always set a good example ourselves by implementing our ideas as proof that they work.

LOBA – Customer Experience Design is a business and marketing agency from Portugal dedicated to customer experience, with headquarters in Oliveira de Azeméis and offices in Lisbon, Aveiro, Guarda and Braga.

Established in 2000, LOBA has around 110 qualified staff members, including senior executives, consultants, creatives, researchers, designers, programmers, as well as, a team of engineers specialised in the development of web-based solutions such as business/enterprise platforms.

Through a comprehensive and integrated range of solutions from branding, promotion, communication, to relationship build-up and interaction with customers we put into practice our mission “to provide excellent customer experiences to the customers of our clients”.

PEDAL Consulting is the leading independent management consultancy in Slovakia and Czech Republic specialised in EU funds and international business development.

Since 2009, the company has been serving European and international associations and companies, and contributed significantly to the creation and growth of several businesses. Up to date, PEDAL consultants have successfully implemented about 40 FP7/H2020/COSME/Erasmus plus projects from the position of partner, subcontractor and coordinator. PEDAL is also managing the Tenderio (www.tenderio.com) platform which helps European SMEs to access new public markets abroad. PEDAL is a member of the Bioeconomy Cluster Slovakia (http://bioeconomy.sk/).

European Schoolnet is the network of 34 European Ministries of Education, based in Brussels. As a non-profit international organisation, we aim to bring innovation in teaching and learning to our key stakeholders: Ministries of Education, schools, teachers, researchers, and industry partners.

We are driven by our mission to support education stakeholders in Europe in the transformation of education processes for 21st century digitalized societies. We do this by identifying and testing promising innovative practices, sharing evidence about their impact, and supporting the mainstreaming of teaching and learning practices aligned with 21st century standards for inclusive education.
Since its founding in 1997, European Schoolnet has used its links with education ministries to help schools become effective in the pedagogical use of technology, equipping both teachers and pupils with the necessary skills to achieve in the digital society.

ZSI is a private non-profit trans-disciplinary social science research institute, established 1990. It is among Austria’s largest social science organisations and Austria’s most successful social scientific research institute in FP7. ZSI’s key activities are clustered in three dedicated units: (1) Work and Equal Opportunities, (2) Research Policy and Development, and (3) Technology and Knowledge. All departments are involved in networking and dialogue activities, bringing stakeholders together to enable and enhance social innovation. Also Responsible Research and Innovation is a cross-cutting issue being addressed in several ZSI projects (e.g. RRI Tools, ICT-RRI Forum and SMART-Map). ZSI frequently coordinates both research and innovation actions (RIA) as well as coordination and support actions (CSA). ZSI is engaged in the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) topic via the FP7/H2020 projects RRI Tools (among other tasks also leading the evaluation), SMART-Map, NanOpinion, and RRI-ICT Forum and in bio-economy in BLOOM. ZSI works in knowledge generation, knowledge implementation and knowledge diffusion, i.e. in research and application, which includes network coordination, consulting as well as education and evaluation. ZSI team members are engaged in a wide variety of innovative, high-impact educational experiences and evaluation methods as ZSI researchers teach at universities, universities of applied sciences and in other educational organisations, give academic and applied presentations with a very high international outreach and they (co-) organise at annual average more than 70 professional events during the last five years. In general the ZSI offers analyses and concepts for promoting and implementing social innovation in its thematically focused areas from a transdisciplinary perspective. In a number of open science, RRI and technology assessment projects (lately, for instance, Smartmap or RRI Tools), ZSI has successfully developed and employed participatory techniques and models of stakeholder inclusion. ZSI has been at the forefront of European-level discussions on open and citizen science (ZSI experts co-authored the White Paper on Citizen Science in Europe). Our experts have a strong focus on research at the interface between technology and users/society: how to develop technology in order to be of use for diverse groups (acceptance, usability, design for all approach, participative methods, empowerment and creation of ownership); as well as to understand the implications of certain technologies (e.g. via constructive technology assessment approaches).

AIJU is the Technological Institute specialised in toys, children’s products and leisure, based in the town of Ibi (Alicante). It also has premises in Valencia.

The objective of AIJU is to optimise the creation and development process of children’s products, starting with the idea and continuing until the product is placed on the market. With more than 30 years’ experience, AIJU has advised hundreds of companies (small, large and multinational) on thousands of products, to guarantee their success.

AIJU offers a wide range of technological services aimed at improving the quality of your products and the competitiveness of your business, and adapting these products to the regulatory, technological and market requirements in force at any time in the areas of children’s and product safety, technological advisory services, testing, product design and development, prototyping, improvement in industrial processes, adaptation of products to meet market demands, knowledge of the child consumer, psychological and educational advice and training, among others.

Q-PLAN is an innovation and management consulting company that focuses its activities in: a) The provision of business and innovation support services to entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs in various major business sectors (like Agriculture, Environment, Manufacturing, Transport, Health, ICT, etc.) in the design and implementation of their innovation strategies; b) The design and management of entrepreneurial and business innovation support related European research projects, support actions and policy studies in various business sectors and technological areas, including Agriculture, Energy (including bio-energy), Transport, Advanced materials and manufacturing, Information and Communication Technologies, Environment, etc. and their related vertical and horizontal business networks and value chains – more than 25 EU-funded projects and policy studies, mainly as coordinator; and c) The development and implementation of Management Systems according to respective standards and regulations (e.g. ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 17025, ISO 15189, ISO 22000, ISO 27001, ISO 13485, GLPs, etc.) where is the market leader in Greece with more than 1400 certified/ accredited systems from all business sectors; The company possesses close linkages and in depth expertise in the Agriculture field, both at national and international level, through a set of well-tailored innovation support and management services spanning from the design and implementation of highly specialized management systems for agri-food companies and organisations, to much more mainstream innovation, SME and business support services focusing on addressing market penetration, commercialization and valorisation aspects of bio-based products and applications addressing the end-customers’ needs and concerns.

FVA is an Italian SME operating since 1990 in the field of new media communication and advanced ICT for research and organizations contexts. Since 1998 FVA is involved in EU financed research projects as partner expert in: Strategic Dissemination and Communication to promote science; Media and New Media production; Social media strategies and ICT solutions (Applications, Widgets, Animated Commercials, E-games); Serious games, advergames and entertainment; Technology Enhanced training platforms; ICT solutions; Graphic design and 3D modelling and animation; HCI and interface design In the following domains: Learning, Health, SSH Social Sciences and Humanities, Social innovation and security, Security, Bio Based Products.

The Hellenic Society for the Protection of Nature (HSPN) is the oldest national environmental NGO in Greece, operating continuously since 1951 throughout the country for the protection of nature. From its very inception it has been at the forefront of efforts to establish national parks, to protect habitats and threatened species of fauna and flora, and to modernise and implement environmental legislation.

For many years the HSPN functioned as a kind of nursery, mainly through the encouragement Antipas gave to young Greeks to promote nature protection: from it developed other more specialised organizations such as the Hellenic Ornithological Society, the Sea Turtle Protection Society of Greece, and the Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk seal (Mom).

The HSPN is a member of important environmental organizations such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It also represents the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE), a worldwide educational organisation, and it operates all five of FEE’s international programmes for environmental education and sustainable management. Since 2016, the HSPN is represent on the FEE Board of Directors through its current President, Nikos G. Petrou.