The aim of the trip is to establish partnerships and new projects with R&D institutions in the country.

From Tuesday to Friday, a delegation of centres led by Lluís Rovira, director of CERCA, will visit different research and innovation bodies associated with the Finnish Government.

The Catalan delegation, made up of directors and researchers from Agrotecnio, the International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE), the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG), the Centre for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF), the Forestry Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC), the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA) and members of the Ministry of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda will meet on Wednesday with representatives from the Natural Resources Institute of Finland (LUKE), the Institute for the Environment (SYKE) and a delegation from the University of Lapland and the Geology and Mining Institute (GTK). On Thursday, they will attend a reception at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and will meet with the European Forest Institute (EFI), the Centre for Research and Technology (VTT), the GTK, Business Finland and the Finnish Research Academy.

The meetings, all of them with a high technical and institutional content, are expected to raise awareness of the importance of the research activity conducted by the participating centres, as well as the Catalan research and innovation ecosystem, which seeks to become a benchmark in Europe.

The trip is part of the agreement signed between the CERCA centres and LUKE last March, through which the CERCA Institute seeks to open up the research and innovation potential of the Catalan system of centres to potential new partners with whom there is currently little or no relationship. The visit is also expected to open the door to new partnerships between institutions for the next European Commission calls for proposals in 2023 and 2024.