Objectives

The objectives of RENSMA have been configured considering Europe’s position regarding R&D&I programs, especially through the strategic objectives of Horizon 2020. We could say that the path of research involves achieving the development of Excellence Science to reinforce Europe’s position, and I would add Spain and our nearby environment in the global scientific panorama. Alongside the project “Doing More Science,” we must consider another closely related project, which is the “Development of New Technologies,” enabling increased competitiveness and the promotion of new economies.

Strategies and Lines of Action

Therefore, RENSMA has oriented its strategies and priority lines of action based on the following premises:

• Exploitation of existing resources, their transformation, and sustainable exploitation through consortia with innovative SMEs that allow the socialization of science and its projection at the national and international levels in a clear bottom-up configuration.
• Address proposals from European R&D&I programs to “Investigate the major issues affecting European citizens,” focusing on essential areas such as health, food, raw materials, the environment, and the sustainability of our production system. This is one of the most important objectives for RENSMA, aiming to develop science directed toward advancing knowledge, especially addressing specific problems of citizens such as the diagnosis of aggressive diseases, aging, healthy foods, raw materials, resources for new technologies, waste transformation, and sustainable environment.
• Consider the scientific-technical and social priorities of the State Plan for Scientific, Technical, and Innovation Research of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO). This plan incorporates major challenges for our society, including health and well-being, food safety and quality, natural resources, marine and maritime research, climate change, and efficient use of resources and raw materials.
• Take into account the strategies of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia through the Research, Development, and Innovation Plan 2020 (PAIDI 2020) regarding research excellence and the role of research in maintaining industrial leadership and addressing social challenges. Priorities for Andalusia include endogenous territorial-based resources, health and social well-being, agribusiness, healthy food, and environmental protection.
• Consider also the different research, development, and innovation strategies planned by our public bodies related to supporting talented individuals, excellent training, collaborative research funding, and initiatives that promote the existence of state-of-the-art research infrastructure available to excellent researchers.

This integrative view of science and research tasks with our society and its development, repeatedly established by R&D&I strategies from the regional to the European level, constitutes the foundation and reason for our Center. It is not the result of occasional improvisation but the ultimate outcome of the activity that various researchers at the University of Huelva have been developing over time, generating joint work initiatives, research projects, and collaborative studies that have led to the creation of a common working scenario. All this is united by the structures that the research system, European, national, and regional, has been generating, under the belief that high-level research is only possible today by combining individual excellence, leveraging synergies allowing collective work, the transversality and multidisciplinarity of related fields, and the progress represented by interfaces between researchers of different backgrounds. But above all, with a clear awareness of the commitment that researchers undertake to the society where they carry out their activity, which nurtures and sets their goals and objectives, and with the conviction that science is a collective task in terms of researchers’ activity, but above all, it is a social work whose fruits must benefit society and its citizens.