New IASP subnetworks to focus on space and sustainability

 Many new initiatives and partnerships are born from IASP conferences, and IASP Seville was no exception: two new subnetworks were announced at this year’s event, dedicated to space and to sustainability respectively.

IASP Space: opening up the commercial opportunities of space 

A joint initiative of Nanoracks (USA) and Technoport (Luxembourg), the Space subnetwork focuses on opening up the commercial opportunities of space on board the GWC Science Park. It provides a platform to facilitate collaboration, share expertise, and accelerate innovation in a broad variety of space activities and related specific environments, such as microgravity, cis-lunar space, and the lunar surface.

Space is an unexplored frontier for both humanity and innovation, and some of the greatest innovations there come from projects that weren’t originally built for space. The environment of space allows for advances in research and next-gen manufacturing. The barriers to entry, while still challenging, have significantly been reduced, and IASP Space is working to reduce them further.

IASP Sustainability: learning from best practice and practical change 

With sustainability the key topic of IASP Seville, it was an ideal moment to launch a new sustainability subnetwork. STPs and AOIs have a leading role to play in consolidating global efforts to combat climate change, and IASP Sustainability will coordinate these efforts and allow IASP members to learn from each other’s best practices.

Coordinated by Surrey Research Park (UK), it will focus on practical changes to reducing carbon emissions and mitigating against the impact of climate change, wider environmental factors like waste, water and food, and ways in which STPs/AOIs and their resident companies can work together to take action.  

New coordinators of Women in IASP

We were also pleased to welcome two new coordinators of our established Women in IASP subnetwork, Sima Valizadeh (Sandbacka Science Park, Sweden) and Fatemeh Shahrestani (Khorasan Science and Technology Park, Iran). They will be working together and sharing the role, in a great example of the value of Women in IASP in building international collaboration between women in science parks. In fact this is where the origin of the subnetwork lies: when the group was founded in 2016, the first coordinator Catherine Johns explained that her inspiration for setting up a subnetwork for women was the experience of collaborating with an Iranian woman science park manager, and learning from each other.

Members of the subnetwork got together at IASP Seville to discuss key topics for collaboration: getting to know more about each other’s ecosystems and the challenges facing female founders when it comes to securing investment were top of the agenda.

Subnetworks are open to all IASP members: if you’d like to join IASP Space, Sustainability or Women in IASP, please get in touch with us at communication@iasp.ws