Objectives/framework

Oceans and seas are identified as the key drivers for European economic development and, as a result, have the potential to deliver new jobs in the coming years. The European Commission is a strong believer and promoter of innovation and sustainable growth based on marine and maritime opportunities.
To exploit the full potential of Blue Growth opportunities multidisciplinar training of graduates across engineering and marine and maritime sciences is essential. It is in this context that the Rome Declaration (adopted at the EurOCEAN 2014) calls for innovation in the provision of marine and maritime graduate training to enhance the skill set of students, to diversify possible career pathways but also to widen their comprehension and appreciation of fundamental marine ecosystem functioning.

Across existing and emerging Blue sectors, fundamental science combined with technical background is essential and should be combined with business development teachings focussing on commercialisation of research results based on direct insights from the industry both multinationals and SMEs.
The annual course fits the challenges mentioned above as it provides holistic training for international Master and PhD students in several blue growth domains while laying out the cross disciplinary links. The first edition took place in 2016 and following-up the success, Ghent University is organizing a second edition in 2017.

Methodology/programme

The programme consists of a maritime and a marine module.
The maritime module covers topics such as blue energy, coastal engineering, building with nature. The marine module covers marine ecosystems and their societal benefits, aquaculture and marine spatial planning.
Students are allowed to attend a single module however attending the entire programme allows a submersion in the cross-disciplinary philosophy of Blue Growth.
In every module lectures explicitly cross over: e.g. the maritime module includes lectures on environmental impact while in the marine module, lectures and an interactive session are provided on the topic of offshore multi-use platforms looking beyond mere biotic and abiotic monitoring and experiments seeking innovative ways to integrate marine and maritime functionalities and applications e.g. blue energy.