“Sustaining Responsible Research and Innovation in the Western Balkan”

Remarkable collaboration occurs when teams from various projects come together in one location to discuss potential collaborations. The concluding conference, titled “Sustaining Responsible Research and Innovation in the Western Balkans,” which took place on February 8th and 9th, 2024, at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences & Arts, marked the culmination of efforts by WBC-RRI.NET.

This event aimd to disseminate project results, highlight key achievements, and enable discussions for continuation of this successful journey. A skills competition on the “Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in practice – a case study competition” was one of the key activities within the event, where students selected from the project partners were working in mixed teams.

In the first day a half-day public event was held introducing project achievements, mainly focusing on the anchor initiatives and the established Regional Association for Responsible Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The other half day featured closed sessions for consortium members, working groups, and the advisory board.

Second day gathered ministry representatives, stakeholders, and participants from other projects. The event was finalized with a pitching session by the students’ teams taking part in the skills competition, and the announcement of the winners.

The Director of Foundation for Management and industrial research, Gabriela Kostovska Bogoeska was participating in the third panels session ‘’ Transferring lessons learnt from other initiatives to the Western Balkans’’. She addressed POLICY ANSWERS project and specifically was shared the best practices used in the Gender Mainstreaming & Inclusiveness practices part.

In this panel useful examples of lessons learnt were shared by: Dobrivoje Lale Eric from Center for the Promotion of Science for the Citizens science projects in Serbia, Dr Petar Vrgovic from University of Novi Sad in Serbia for REINFORCING project and Asst. prof. dr Trajce Velkovski from Faculty of Mechanical Engineering from UKIM Macedoniafor GREENOVET project.