Reunión de las Asociaciones de Investigadores Españoles en el extranjero en Madrid


(Artículo sólo disponible en inglés, más información en nota de prensa en español.)

Luis and I attended the meeting of the associations of Spanish researchers abroad. We were invited by the FECYT and it was a long-awaited meeting. These associations include a broad range of researchers whose commonality is that they are Spanish but their science/research belongs to the country that employs them. Our associations include from PhD students to full professors and our objectives can be found here; even though moving back to Spain would be attractive for many of us, opening pathways for moving back to Spain is not one of our objectives.

The first day of meetings was dedicated to the associations. We finally met with our counterparts from the other associations and discussed how to move forward towards creating a world confederation/federation/association (the name is not clear) of associations with the objective of having one strong voice to communicate with Madrid. There are currently 9 active associations in the world:

The second day of the meeting included researchers and diplomatic representatives and the Australia-Pacific team now included Cesar Espada who is both a member of SRAP/IEAP and our contact in the Spanish embassy in Canberra.

The three Australia-Pacific representatives in Madrid

Luis Salvador-Carulla, Ana Vila-Concejo and Cesar Espada during the meeting of the associations of Spanish researchers abroad. Madrid, Fundacion Areces. June 2015.

The morning of the second day of the meeting was first dedicated to the presentation of the programs that Spain currently has in place to capture foreign talent. There were some examples of success but there was the underlying problem that most of the programs rely on soft money fellowships which have a limited duration. This prevents researchers from establishing their careers in Spain and it also limits their eligibility for applying to funding grants. The great difficulty that foreigners (and we should include us as foreigners here) have to enter the university system in Spain was also discussed but no conclusions were reached.

We had a meeting of associations in the afternoon. Each association presented what they were doing in their respective regions and there was a round of discussion with representatives from FECYT and other Science/Research/Innovation representatives from the Spanish government and private foundations. It was inspirational to see how much science and networking is being done all around the world by a bunch of volunteers like us!

All the associations got together and worked in a press release in Spanish.

 

Ana Vila-Concejo


Ana Vila-Concejo

Acerca de Ana Vila-Concejo

My career started in Spain, where I did my undergraduate and MSc studying urban beaches at the University of Vigo; and Portugal, where I completed my PhD at the University of Algarve investigating the short and medium term evolution of tidal inlets in a barrier island system. Then I moved to Australia and started looking into the morphodynamics of flood-tide deltas in wave-dominated coasts within the framework of an ARC funded linkage project which was based in Port Stephens. In 2010 I started researching the morphodynamics of sand aprons in reef platforms. In 2011 I was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship to continue the studies in the dynamics of coral sands. Since 2012, I am the Director of One Tree Island Research Station. I am interested in the contemporary processes and morphodynamics of coastal systems. I started with siliciclastic temperate environments and I am now also interested in the dynamics of carbonate (coral) sand. My present studies on coral sand are mostly based on fieldwork campaigns undertaken in While I am presently dedicating most of my time to carbonate sand I remain insterested in low energy beaches, tidal inlets, overwash, coastal erosion, hazards and coastal management. I am a keen fieldworker and have experience in acquiring and processing hydrodynamic, topographic and bathymetric data. I have also worked with fluorescent tracers for studying sediment transport processes. At present, I am also using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a tool to analyse recent and present data. While I am presently dedicating most of my time to carbonate sand I remain insterested in low energy beaches, tidal inlets, overwash, coastal erosion, hazards and coastal management. I am a keen fieldworker and have experience in acquiring and processing hydrodynamic, topographic and bathymetric data.