InnovaWood General Assembly and Seminar 2012

29 February- 1 March, Ghent, Belgium

About 20 participants from 12 different countries attended the InnovaWood General Assembly 2012 from the 29th of February- 1st of March in Ghent, Belgium.
The event took place in the time-honored culture and convention center “Het Pand” which used to be an old Dominican monastery located in the heart of the city near to the river Leie.
The two days meeting opened with the welcoming of InnovaWood’s President Ewa Ratajczak
and continued with the review of 2011, the outlook for 2012 and the InnovaWood initiatives in the next time. Before the workshop on the InnovaWood division began, which focused on the discussion of the planning of the projects in 2012, the heads of the InnovaWood divisions gave a short introduction to their work and the ideas for the division in the upcoming year. Furthermore, in the afternoon members of the InnovaWood network shortly presented their researches within the Early Stage Researchers presentation Forum.

In the evening, the participants had the possibility to walk on a guided tour through the historical city center of Ghent before enjoying the delicious dinner in the former warehouse- ‘t pakhuis.

The second day of the meeting dealt with the seminar in the scope of the seventh framework program for research infrastructure project “Trees4Future”.
After the general introduction of the Trees4Future project, presentations on the new innovative key infrastructures and research tools within the InnovaWood network and other institutions in Europe were given in order to inform the participants about the possibilities of transnational access to research infrastructure in Europe. Since Ghent University is part of the Trees4Future project, a visit to the wood laboratory of Ghent University was organized afterwards.
Furthermore, as an introduction to the excursion in the afternoon, Hugo Coppens (CTIB-TCHN) and Annelies de Groote (Van Hoorebeke) made a speech on the CE marking in the wood trading process.

Some of the participants took the opportunity to visit the wood trading company “Van Hoorebeke” in the harbor of Ghent guided by Annelies De Groote.