PHEMAC Newsletter Goals
The PHEMAC newsletter has been designed and aims at promoting the project’s results to interested users, It has multi-fold objectives:

• Inform on recent and future PHEMAC activities and events,
• Summarize ongoing activities,
• Provide links to detailed material on specific subjects,
• Foster liaison with other related projects,
• Disseminate and advertise the project’s results,
• Announce significant events (e.g. conferences) related to PRIMA SRIA priorities and WEF fields

About PHEMAC
PHEMAC aims to develop and disseminate an interactive platform that will gather and share best practices focused on PRIMA SRIA priorities, involving a wide range of stakeholders from the farming system, water management and agri-food sectors.

December 2021

Registrations now open for the joint NEX-LABS and PHEMAC Water, Energy, Food NEXUS Virtual Innovation Week; Paving the way towards Entrepreneurship

From 17 to 20 January 2022

From 17 to 20 January 2022, the joint NEX-LABS and PHEMAC innovation week will bring together Euro-Mediterranean researchers, policy makers, investors, Industry players, Academia, Technology Transfer Offices, SMEs, startups and Entrepreneurs. The event will provide participants with unique opportunities to know more about Water, Energy and Food (WEF) NEXUS status and realities in Tunisia and the Euro-Mediterranean Region and to forge strategic partnerships across Europe and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The PHEMAC iHub now live

Conceived as a tool to stimulate visibility and re-use of results, the iHub is a central component of the PHEMAC project which collects and disseminates information about projects funded by various agencies that publicly share their data.

This knowledge-based platform is composed by 4 main elements designed to enhance cross-fertilization of different territorial experiences and multidisciplinary collaboration:

• A dissemination tool called Plaza that consists of a virtual “Agorà”, a web space that is populated automatically with news, information, tweets, etc about the main themes covered by the PHEMAC project: all this content is grouped in “Flows”, each one dedicated to a specific topic. Access it here: https://www.phemac.eu/agora/


• A marketplace called Rialto which has been conceived as a repository and match-making on-line tool to create a ‘virtual space for innovation’. This is the heart of Ihub and its goal is to facilitate the encounter between technology users and technology producers/intermediaries in different sectors, maintaining a focus on innovation. Link: https://ihub.phemac.eu/rialto


• The LINK Job bank, which provides up-to-date information about job opportunities in the geographical area (therefore in the Mediterranean regions) and in the thematic sectors of the PHEMAC project. This service has been designed especially for a younger audience, looking for job opportunities, either in public research centres or in the private sector. Accessible from this link: https://www.phemac.eu/hh_flow/job-bank/


• Finally, the BPiMED on-line mapping tool allows to classify the projects included in the Rialto marketplace according to a configurable set of best practices according to a controlled set of categories that allow to associate one or more best practices to a project. Try the tool here: https://ihub.phemac.eu/rialto

The Go2Market Regional Hackathon and Acceleration Program

This program is organized by Berytech under the PHEMAC project, enabling researchers to validate their innovation in the market, further strengthen their know-how and define their go-to-market strategy tapping into the Mediterranean Food-Energy-Water Nexus sector.   After an intensive 3-day Hackathon, eleven startups and/or projects pitched their ideas and only eight were selected to join the Go2Market Acceleration program, enabling these innovators and entrepreneurs to validate their ideas and develop their Go2Market strategy.

Capitalization plan progress: support and promotion

90 EU funded projects analysed; i.e. 41 projects are funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme whereas 49 projects are funded by ENI CBC MED programme co-financed by the European Commission. Each project was intensively studied to identify the intended innovation upon which the project is based. It has been noted that there is no direct linkage between commercialization channels and TRL due to several factors, yet its importance in evaluating the commercialization of technologies cannot be overlooked. However, this report managed to introduce best practices in the choice of commercialization channels in an attempt to link commercialization channels with TRL parameters.

PHEMAC Editorial Board meetings

19/07/2021 – 30/08/21 – 11/10/21 – 22/11/21

The editorial board of the project has organized 4 virtual meetings on the 19 July, 30 august, 11 October and 22 November 2021 and discussed about:

• Upcoming PHEMAC activities
• Follow up of dissemination and communication of the project
• Dissemination of the Phemac hackathon Go to market
• Organisation of Phemac brokerage event
• The content of PIPA workshop and Focus group meeting during the innovation week
• Thematic and agenda of the regional conference