On 9 and 10 March the consortium celebrated the 15th Month Progress and review meeting in Ghent, Belgium, hosted by Scientific Coordinator Korneel Rabaey and his team. The Project Officer (EC) Carmen de Vicente and Reviewer Monitor Erick Trably assigned by EC attended this meeting. In addition, Dr Doris Van Halen, from the University of Delft, a member of the Stakeholder Advisory Board and an expert in the field of water, offered a very interesting feedback.
The first year of ELECTRA project has demonstrated that Sino-European collaboration for promoting bioremediation of polluted environments using microbial electrical systems is indeed a fact. Some of the proposed targets were already achieved and we are facing a promising scenario for selection of the champion technologies in the next period. The presentations shown in Ghent were impressive and revealed the relevance of working as a consortium to solve complex environmental problems in matrices as different as groundwater, soils, urban wastewater, and sediments. The partners as a whole are one step closer to achieve these innovative technologies to help the planet.
This Progress meeting should have been held in Beijing; however, due to the extraordinary circumstances caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic the meeting was rescheduled in Ghent. Yet, many of the partners, especially the Chinese and Italian colleagues, had to attend the meeting via teleconferencing. The consortium hopes that at the next Project meeting all partners will be physically there.
