BeNCoRe grants, call 2006-2007

• Els Cuveliers


Evaluation: ...During my stay at the University of Bergen, I have learned how to prepare otoliths and analyse them with the technique of Laser-Ablation-ICPMS for microchemistry. The work fitted in the framework of my PhD-research and the EU FP7 project ‘FishPopTrace.By combining genetic, phenotypic and microchemical methods, it may be possible to detect differences among seemingly genetically homogeneous groups of common sole, to increase our understanding in the processes responsible for population discreteness or homogenization and to assess the contribution of sole coastal nursery areas to spawning and feeding aggregations for better preservation of this overexploited fish species. I am very satisfied about my stay in Norway. The collaboration with the Research group in Fisheries Ecology and Aquaculture in Bergen was both very interesting and pleasant. I am very grateful for the travelling grant I got from BenCore because this gave me the opportunity to learn new techniques, broaden my knowledge and meet interesting people in this field of research.





• Bruno Delille


Evaluation: This grant allowed me to take part to the preparation, deployment of typical, yet up to date, apparatus for measurement of CO2 fluxes by eddy-correlation. I have also been involved in data processing and analysis. This expertise will be applied very rapidly, since the Chemical Oceanography Unit of the University of Liège, in collaboration with the Faculté Universitaire des Sciences Agronomiques de Gembloux and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, will deploy a similar equipment by January 2009 along the coast of Alaska in Barrow.
In addition, the stay tightened the collaboration between the Chemical Oceanography Unit of the Ulg and the UMR EPOC of the University of Bordeaux 1. Hence, thanks to the collaboration between the two groups, during the three last month, one paper (Koné et al., 2009) on the CO2 dynamics in lagoons of Ivory Coast was accepted for publication in Estuarine an coast, while another paper (Koné et al.) on CH4 dynamics in lagoons of Ivory Coast was submitted to Biogemistry. In addition a third paper (Delille et al., 2008) related to pCO2 dynamics within Macrocystis kelp beds of the Kerguelen Archipelago benefited for useful discussion with Dr G. Abril, has been corrected and accepted for publication in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science and acknowledge the contribution of BENCORE network in the paper.

• Liu Nengye


Evaluation: ...The three weeks\' intensive courses are focusing on law of sea,including general legal regime and history(one week);fishing and maritime delimitation(one week);marine environment(one week).It invited many leading professors,Judges from ITLOS and ICJ and experts from IMO to lecture.I am very satisfied with this experiece.It is not only a great oppurtunity to know the recent development in my field but also very good for the networking...




• Damien Sirjacobs


Evaluation: The team of the DOP-UAC is particularly active and experimented in the field of seabed habitat mapping, closely related to the BENCORE theme 6 (Effect of Development and Use on Eco-morphology and Coastal Habitats) and 7 (Restoration and Preservation of Coastal Biodiversity).
The support of the BENCORE travel grant was profitable to the BENCORE network, in different ways:

by allowing to maintain working contact with the team of the DOP-UAC, supporting thus progress of the on-going PhD of one BENCORE member;
by allowing to prepare a joint presentation concerning results of macroalgae population monitoring by seabed imaging analysis for the international “Ocean Optics 2008” conference;
and by allowing discussion of potential future collaborations within the theme “seabed habitat mapping”, as exploitations of existing visible and high resolution acoustic image databases for the study and monitoring of other benthic biologogical species.





• Matthias Baeye


Evaluation:...intensive workshop on coastal dynamics and its practical applications. Mmain stress on theoretical calculations, especially the course of dr. L Van Rijn helped me a lot to understand the standard sediment load transport formulae. Besides, the visit to the laboratory and good explanations of the PhD students working there, was a good counterpart of the theory. In total, i am very satisfied; the level of education was high, thought comprehensible good atmosphere among the participants with surprisingly different study backgrounds, - also thanks to the field trip I keep on having contact with some of them




• Ana Isabel Dos Ramos


Evaluation: I have participated on the 2nd Symposium on Ocean Acidification (MONACO), a very important venue where I had the possibility of both sharing my work and meet other researchers that are engaged to the same subject of my PhD thesis. It was of great importance for my work. I am pleased for the help that the ENCORA-BeNCoRe scholarship has provide. As I have mentioned, my participation on the international Symposium on Ocean Acidification was of great importance for my work. In addition to this fact it was also possible to share part of the work done in marine biology at Belgian laboratories (in this case BIOMAR at ULB) with other research groups.

• Maarten Vanhove


Evaluation: ...The complexity of the sand goby species complex in this region necessitates an interdisciplinary way of working with local experts. The visit was a great opportunity to enhance the cooperation between two ENCORA partner institutes through personal interactions between scientists working on the same research model using different, but very complementary approaches. This gave me a great insight in the Greek hydrological systems under study, and in the ideas of our Greek colleagues on goby evolution. My seminar provoked a fruitful discussion about my research and the use it can have in the interest of ongoing research in Greece. During the field work, I learned a lot about the way of working of our colleagues and about goby ecology in situ. To conclude, I would like to say that both our teams regard this collaboration as vital for the questions we want to tackle. This visit was very satisfactory and promising for the future. We believe this combined research will result in a greater fundamental knowledge of a yet poorly understood group of coastal fish and their parasites, and provide crucial information for management and conservation of marine, estuarine and coastal freshwater ecosystems.




• Pascal Joassin


BeNCoRe grant was used to sustain travel costs in order to participate to the AMEMR (Advances in Marine Ecosystem Modelling Research) symposium, held in Plymouth in june 2008

• Fabian Lenartz


Evaluation: ...Participation of many scientists from institutions involved in ENCORA (http://geos2.nurc.nato.int/mreaconf/)
Acknowledgement for BeNCoRe in a future publication about the super-ensemble techniques applied to wave forecast...




• Alessio Giardino


Evaluation: ...The TELEMAC User Club represents an opportunity for end users of the TELEMAC modelling system to present their own studies and to discuss with developer teams. During the workshop, new features in the numerical modelling tools were presented by the different developers, followed by case studies and applications of the user groups. Within this last group of presentations, I had the opportunity to show some of the results obtained during my PhD research, in a work with title “Hydrodynamics and cohesive sediment transport in a highly human impacted estuary”. In the presentation, results from numerical simulations and measurements collected at the IJzer estuary (Belgian Coast) were shown.

The workshop was highly valuable and will have a direct impact on the results of my PhD research, on the different national projects to which the research is connected (MONAIJ, MAREBASSE, QUEST4D) and, as a consequence, on the ENCORA and BeNCoRe networks...





• Victor Lander


Evaluation: ...The Coastlab Teaching Autumn School was very interesting. The topics were relevant for my doctoral research and the level of the course was good. The networking with young people doing similar things as you do, was very good.
I am very satisfied by the grant of BeNCoRe. This gives me the possibility to use my other scolarship for other things relevant for my PhD...




• Dogan Kiscacik


Evaluation: ...Firstly I learned about proper generation of linear and non linear waves in the wave flume and well developed methods for passive and active wave absorption in the laboratory.

Secondly, I learned about the application and theory behind the instruments like wave gauges, pressure sensors and high speed cameras which I am planning to use in my own work. Then I discussed with the experts about their experience on how to use the instruments in an efficient way, possible errors and input parameters ranges.

I found information on data analysis methods and their theoretical background were quite interesting and I discussed about possible difficulties and practical solutions in data analysis process. .

CoastLab Teaching Autumn School was quite meaningful for me which designed as a hands-on application-oriented training course. It provided me with the knowledge necessary to apply physical modelling to a wide range of port and coastal protection applications. The course covered a wide range of issues from wave generation to wave-structure interactions.

I found the traveling support for the young professional of BeNCoRe is quite meaningful. I believe this will provide young professionals to be more active in the field of research...

• Sofie Derous



• Dino De Waen
  
  Evaluation:...What the ENCORA/BENCORE relevance is concerned, I was able to link up with Peter Jones of the University College London and Juan Vivero of the University of Sevilla. The first has written a number of A1 articles related to our current research and provided us with some crucial information. We were also capable to assist the second with information on marine spatial planning and our experiences in Belgium. Overall it was a very successful workshop where some very relevant information exchanges that took place certainly in the morning session.
  
  
  
  
  



• Erika Souche


Evaluation:...I have attended the 15th Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) and the 6th Annual European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB). These conferences gather scientists from computer science, molecular biology, mathematics, and statistics. I could attend many interesting talks over various topics and broaden my knowledge. I also attended the 3rd Student Council Symposium where I could meet students studying bioinformatics.

Thanks to this conference, I have now a better view of all the applications of bioinformatics. I have new insights on how to analyse my data and how to use the SNPs I developed. Moreover, I could attend few talks over the use of the SNPs in a biological context in various species. Finally I could meet people able to help me in my future research...




• Nicolas Sturaro


Evaluation:...The Symposium has sought to integrate ecological, economic and social aspects of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), covering a large number of themes (e.g. ecological effects of MPAs, MPAs effects on fisheries and other uses, Assessing MPAs performance: monitoring, models and indicators, Tools for MPAs planning and design,…). More than 300 scientific contributions (poster sessions and oral presentations), received from all over the world, were presented and participants came from more than 50 countries. The roundtables succeed to integrate and discuss new research findings and provide perspectives on future practices and policies for MPAs. It brought together researchers, managers and representatives from a range of marine sectors and organisations.

In terms of “personnal activity”, it gave me the opportunity to discuss about my research project (i.e. Effects of marine protected areas, at different spatial scales, on amphipod populations associated to Posidonia oceanica meadows. Relation with trophic cascade) with the best scientists working in my new field of study. It allowed me to establish new contacts (Guala Ivan, Fondazione IMC, IT; Seytre Catherine, Gestion de la Biodiversite Universite Nice Sophia-Antipolis, FR; Lehuta Sigrid, IFREMer, FR and many others) and broad my perception of new aspects of MPAs. Overall, the symposium was valuable resource of ideas, offering information and strategies that met my needs.

The “European Symposium on Marine Protected Areas as a Tool for Fisheries Management and Ecosystem Conservation. Emerging science and interdisciplinary approaches” held in Murcia was directly related to ENCORA thematic networks (in particular theme 7: restoration and preservation of coastal biodiversity). Moreover, the participants included many scientists and managers from European institutes and organisations of which a lot of ENCORA partners (e.g. Ghent University, BE; CSIC Instituto de Ciencias del Mar, ES; IEO Centro Oceanografico de Canarias, ES; University of Newcastle, GB; University of Plymouth, GB and many others). This made this event a real interest towards the BeNCoRe and ENCORA network...

• Natalie Beenaerts



• Annemie Volckaert



• Kathy Belpaeme



• Alberto Borges