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Everything you wanted to ask about science advice #AskRolf

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Professor Heuer is the Chair of the European Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors which provides independent and high quality scientific advice to the College of European Commissioners, and an experimental particle physicist. Before joining the Group of Advisors, he was CERN Director-General until December 2015.

On 3 November at 11:00, Professor Heuer will answer your questions and discuss with you how to make politicians listen and understand science and why it is important live on YouTube.

SAPEA Science for policy podcast

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In September, SAPEA – one of ALLEA’s flagship projects – launched a series of podcasts on science advice for policy. Invited experts and science advice practitioners reflect on how far we should rely on science to make political decisions,  what makes a good science advisor, what to do when the evidence is incomplete or controversial,  what happens when science advice goes wrong,  and other questions on science-policy interactions.

So far, six episodes have been published. They feature:

  • Clarissa Rios Rojas, a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.
  • Mark Walport, a member of the SAGE committee, and former chief scientific advisor to the UK.
  • Vladimír Šucha and Marta Sienkiewicz, editors of the Joint Research Centre’s new science advice handbook.
  • Bart Koelmans, a chair of the advisory groups on microplastics pollution for the UN and EU.
  • Rolf Heuer and Pearl Dykstra, respectively the chair and deputy chair of the European Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors.
  • Peter Gluckman, the chair of the International Network for Government Science Advice, and a former chief science advisor to New Zealand.

The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.

Covid-19 and our food: How is the current crisis affecting how we eat?

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The Covid-19 pandemic has altered many aspects of our daily lives, including our trip to the supermarket, the access to food at times of uncertainty or how we eat when we spend more time at home. SAPEA just started a webinar series dedicated to “Sustainable food system” and the first webinar opened the discussion asking how Covid-19 has changed the way we eat. Experts debated the shifting consumers’ attitudes towards food as a public good instead of as a commodity, and confronted the conclusions of a recent SAPEA report with the challenges observed during this crisis.

 

 

Webinar series

Co-hosted by Europe’s academies and other partners, the webinar series will explore different aspects of Europe’s food system following the publication of SAPEA’s major evidence review report A sustainable food system for the European Union and the scientific opinion of the European Commission’s Chief Scientific Advisors. Future webinars in the series, planned for the autumn, will examine the EU’s new Farm2Fork strategy (co-hosted with the EU Food Policy Coalition) and the role of agroecology and technology in sustainability (co-hosted with a European academy). 

ALLEA is involved in SAPEA as one of the five academy networks in Europe. SAPEA is part of the European Commission’s Scientific Advice Mechanism.

For more information visit SAPEA website.

Check out the report here.