The smaller countries such as Estonia are inherently benefiting from COST actions as small and big countries have the equal representation participants-wise in the Management Committee. My Lab has been active in several successful COST actions, the most recent of which was COST CA15114 – ‘Anti-Microbial Coating Innovations to prevent infectious diseases’ (AMICI), 2016-2020. In this COST action, I was nominated to lead one of the central tasks and was a member of the Core-Group. Most importantly, this COST Action led to the publication of eight joint scientific papers of my team with key participants of this Action. In addition, students and post-docs from other labs (Krunoslav Ilic from Zagreb, Croatia, Virginija Kalciene from Vilnius University, Lithuania, Svetlana Vihodceva from Riga Technical University, Latvia) were working in my Lab and my Lab’s students (Merilin Rosenberg) and post-docs (Angela Ivask) were working in the Lab of Prof. William C. Keevil (University of Southampton, UK) during their Short-Term Scientific Missions (STSMs). In addition, my Lab hosted a successful AMICI seminar in Tallinn (2017) and was active in all the annual and working-group meetings of AMICI. Thus, this COST Action was a real success story for my Lab.
Anne Kahru, National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics (NICPB), Tallinn, EstoniaHead of the Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology