Marine Biotechnology, the new ScanBalt network within marine bioscience was presented on August 26th in its own session at the 3rd ScanBalt Forum in Turku, Finland. The idea for the network originally came from a 2-day NorFA funded workshop in Copenhagen in January 2004 during which representatives from most of the ScanBalt region countries participated.

At the recent ScanBalt forum Professor Peter Aleström from the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science in Oslo reviewed the background and future perspectives for the network. Jan A Olafsen, Professor at the Norwegian College of Fishery Science, University of Tromsø, and President of the European Society of Marine Biotechnology presented the international context of Marine Biotech networks. Dr. Martin Lalk from Professor Ulrike Lindequist’s group at the University of Greifswald, Germany presented Marine Biotech from the South East Baltic Region, Germany and Poland, with a special emphasis on pharmaceutical biology. All three presentations, which included areas spanning from marine ecology and genomics, aquatic medicine, bioprospecting and drug testing to model species and live bio-banks, demonstrated the fact that Marine Biotech includes a wide diversity of sub-disciplines and competences.

Primary targets presented in a proposal to NorFA for funding of a 5 year network are to establish a website for publishing the results of competence mapping, a database of available funds and listings of Marine Biotech events. A virtual Marine Biotech text collection will be created to meet the present lack of text books within marine biotechnology, common research training courses will be set up and strategies to encourage the long-term mobility of researchers and research students will be put in place. This will strengthen the Marine Biotech sector and contribute to the ScanBalt metaregion's development. 

The conclusion so far is that Marine Biotechnology makes up an essential part of the "ScanBalt borderless network of networks". The next ScanBalt Forum will be held in Oslo, Norway in November 2005 and aims to further develop the network by bringing up several specific themes representing ScanBalt Marine Biotech competences and by trying to attract the SME sector to become an interactive and integrated part of the network along with academic and public marine research.


Read more about the Marine Biotechnology Network here.

Read the Prof. Aleström's presentation from the ScanBalt forum here.