High level participants from the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization, representatives of governments of the Black Sea countries as well as researchers from the targeted region attended the symposium. The 45 participants represented 7 countries, Greece, Romania, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, Turkey etc.

Ambassador Bratislav Dordevic, BSEC the Permanent International Secretariat  in charge of the Working Group on Science and Technology represented  the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization. He noted that 3rd Action plan on S&T cooperation had been put in force since December 2014 and the BSEC is ready to support all initiatives in line with the action plan.

Welcome speeches were delivered by the PABSEC Vice President, Mr. Simos Kedikoglou and by the ICBSS National Director of Romania and Director of the Romanian Diplomatic Institute, Mr. Dan Petre and Ambassador Bratislav Dordevic on behalf of the BSEC Organisation.
The ICBSS had the honour and great pleasure to welcome renowned speakers and participants from the Black Sea countries, from the academia, business and civil society, offering a platform for dialogue in order to stimulate enhanced regional STI cooperation for mutually beneficial joint actions.
First day of the Symposium was devoted to a Special Joint Session of the IBSS and the Circle of Inspiring Women for a Sustainable Future (CIWoS) on “Science & Gender”. During the session Ms. Betty Tsakarestou, Panteion University of Social & Political Sciences, in her speech stressed on the need to reshape gender issues towards exploring talents of each person in more efficient way rather than to balance gender structures manually.

Ms. Anatoli Pataridou, MD, ENT Surgeon, devoted her presentation to objective differences in male and female values that lead to different patterns of carriers in S&T activity.  While Ms. Daria Catalui, Founder Danube.EDU NGO, addressed the role of women in science and their access to equal opportunities, through ICT and coding education.

The second day was fully devoted to the issue of building knowledge-based economies within the BS-EU cooperation process. Through interactive sessions main speakers presented their studies and answered questions. 

 Ms. Aimilia Protogerou, Laboratory of Industrial & Energy Economics, National Technical University of Athens, spoke about the academic entrepreneurship and results of  FP7 AEGIS project. Mr. Oguz Demir, EU Research Center, Istanbul Commerce University, focused on drivers of the future economy and the need to build efficient ecosystem for innovation in the Black Sea region, as well as improving institutional quality, which is very hard to improve.  Mr. Vitalii Gryga, Institute for Economics and Forecasting, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, provided outlook of STI indicators for the Black Sea countries and stressed on that STI performance of all BSEC countries are not matched with economic development.

Mr. Georgios Marnellos and Ms. Tzouliana Kraia, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, University of Western Macedonia, Mr. Vasilis Kyriazis, Dept. of Economics, University of Thessaly and Ms. Mirjana Lenhardt, Institute for Multidisciplinary Research, University of Belgrade, discussed the perspectives of STI cooperation in certain fields, like energy generation, aerospace and fishery.

In conclusion session all participants agreed that joint effort on STI cooperation should be intensified and have to be visible. And our task is to organize visible links and collaboration in the region given that “just speaking on innovations does not create innovations”.

Presentations and further related information:

• Programme_8th IBSS
• Press Release_8th IBSS
• Presentation of Ms. Daria CATALUI
• Presentation of Ms. Aimilia PROTOGEROU
• Presentation of Mr.Vitalii GRYGA
• Presentation of Ms. Mirjana LENHARDT
• Family Photo_1