Euskampus Bordeaux Eguna 2021

2021 edition

The new ComorPD Laboratory for Trans-Border Cooperation (LTC) in Non-motor Comorbidities in Parkinson's Disease will be dedicated to studying Parkinson's disease. More specifically, it will seek to decipher the neural basis of motor and non-motor complications caused by the disease, i.e. movement problems and neuropsychiatric changes, among others. Cristina Miguélez, from the UPV/EHU, and Jérôme Baufreton, from the University of Bordeaux, are in charge of the project. Laboratories for Trans-Border Cooperation are structures that allow research teams from the Basque Country and Bordeaux to work together and increase the added value of the scientific results. There are now five LTCs in operation with this laboratory, the first in the health field. The other four do research in the areas of physical chemistry on a quantum scale, advanced manufacturing, applied mathematics, and sustainable concretes.

This year, Euskampus Bordeaux held a face-to-face meeting of its community at Tabakalera Donostia-San Sebastian, in a revamped format that focused on fostering the interaction and active participation of all attendees in a programme spanning two days, October 28 and 29.

With ten years under its belt, Euskampus Bordeaux Eguna 21 was without doubt the perfect time to review the main joint milestones, highlight the hallmarks of this community and pool more than 20 emblematic projects that are being developed as a result of cross-border collaboration.

The event alternated plenary sessions, that were also streamed to a wider public, with participative workshops - a new feature at this edition - and moments of social and cultural gatherings. This innovation in the programme gives response to participants in previous editions calling for a space for interaction with the aim of getting to know each other better, contextualising the meeting and continuing to build collaboration networks that are ultimately based on solid personal-professional relations. They are the people who are building the future of cross-border collaboration and, as organisers, we believe that it is important to share spaces for this social, multi-cultural, multilingual and transdisciplinary cohesion.

Co-creating and connecting for the common good is the Euskampus motto and this was the perfect time to put the results of the Euskampus’s deliberations on transdisciplinary collaboration since 2016 into practice, along with the means necessary to make it a reality. This space of mutual fertilisation between disciplines and projects took the form of an experimental activity in which we were able to see the synergy that can emerge from different perspectives when it comes to tackling a common project. We are convinced that quality transdisciplinarity can lead to a virtuous spiral of learning, connections and new projects.

The participative workshop, “Building in cross-border, multilingual and inter-cultural contexts” held on October 28 was a space for highlighting the cultural, linguistic, institutional and disciplinary diversity of the Euskampus Bordeaux community, which has been the foundation for jointly building a cross-border higher education context in terms of opportunities. We provided the space to foster contact with our multiple identities in order to enable this social cohesion to resume challenges and keep channels of communication open in the future.

Furthermore, a group of 10 bachelor's degree, master's degree and PhD students from the two universities took up the challenge of presenting their project in 180 seconds on the second day of the meeting. At this edition, the training given for this educational format was in Spanish, French and Basque and for the first time there were presentations in all three languages, covering the whole university education spectrum (bachelor's degree, master's degree and PhD).

There was also a commitment to open science, with a “project plaza” proposed on October 29, where the public formed teams to find out more about the projects of the Euskampus Bordeaux Community in an interactive and participative way. At the ‘project plaza’, routes were defined that made it possible to interact with community projects, collaborative research groups, Euskampus COVID-19 Resilience projects and the Laboratories for Trans-border Cooperation.

Let us briefly review a small sample of more than 20 initiatives from the wide range of joint actions from the Euskampus-Bordeaux community that reflect the diversity of collaborations between the two universities and their partners, Tecnalia and DIPC:

• A knowledge community (Fotonika)
• Four Joint Laboratories (Artificial Intelligence, Renewable Energies in the Marine Environment, Advanced Pharmaceutical Developments and Design of Sustainable Concrete)
• Four joint degrees (Marine Resources, Environmental Eco-toxicology, Polymer Science and Technology, Smart Grids)
• Six Euskampus COVID-19 Resilience Programme projects
• Five varied projects: networks, educational innovation, research, etc.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that at this edition there was also the opportunity for a leisure and cultural activity, which took place at the Chillida Leku Museum. Participants enjoyed a guided tour of a unique museum, which is a masterpiece in itself. The fusion between art and nature occurs naturally there. Sculptures are integrated into the landscape as if they were part of it. Beech, oak and magnolia trees coexist in the garden with the monumental steel and granite sculptures positioned in perfect dialogue with the environment. It was a magical moment of social interaction with art and nature.

After the closing session, in which Eva Ferreira, Rector of the University of the Basque Country, Manuel Tuñon de Lara, Rector of the University of Bordeaux, Ricardo Diez, Director of DIPC, Jesús Valero, Managing Director of Tecnalia, Miren Artaraz, Director of University Policy and Coordination of the Department of Education of the Basque Government, and Mathieu Bergé, CEO of the Nouvelle Aquitaine Region, took part, a tribute was paid to Manuel Tuñon de Lara, who, as Rector of the University of Bordeaux, promoted the cross-border campus project from the outset and is now concluding his last term of office.

“We need to be more ambitious, so that knowledge and innovation become the real hubs of the region”, said Tuñon de Lara after a performance by a pair of ‘dantzaris’ from the group Kresala.

A superb performance by the Orfeón Donostiarra choir brought the meeting to a close, a meeting which had brought together cutting-edge cross-border research with Basque art and culture.