The annual conference of the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) was held this week in Brussels.  FEHRL played a substantial role with presentations of five projects and contributed to the initiative to create a specific Task Force on Infrastructures.

Agnieszka Lukasiewicz of IBDiM Poland has been awarded the Silver Badge of Honor of the Scientific Society for Organization and Management (TNOiK) Poland.

FEHRL Secretariat welcomes Imre Keseru to the team. During his 4.5 month secondment, Imre will be involved in the preparation of FP7 project proposals due in January 2010 and assist the Research Infrastructures Assessment Working Group. Imre graduated from the University of Szeged in Hungary in geography, urban planning and economics and has an MSc degree in Transport Planning from Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom. He worked at the International Department of the Ministry of Transport of Hungary for six years before joining KTI Institute for Transport Sciences in 2008 where he is deputy head of the Division for Network Planning and Transport Organization.

The FEHRL Office in Brussels, Belgium is looking to recruit a Finance Officer to support its portfolio of research project activities. This is a fulltime post at the FEHRL Secretariat, located in Woluwe, 1200 Brussels. The starting date will be expected in December 2009/January 2010. For the full job description, please visit our careers page.

The ECA reviewed the so-called New Instruments introduced in FP6 and concluded their objectives were only partially achieved. ‘Networks of Excellence’ did not often achieve a progressive and self-sustainable integration of the research activities between the network partners. ‘Integrated projects’ failed to attract more resources from individual participants and additional sources of public and private financing.