AUA Becomes a Member of the European Commission’s Copernicus Academy

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In July 2021, the American University of Armenia (AUA) Acopian Center for the Environment became a member of the Copernicus Academy. The European Commission’s Copernicus Academy currently has a network of over 170 members. 

The Copernicus Academy was launched by the European Commission as part of Copernicus User Uptake activities. The network of Copernicus Participating Countries (EU28, Norway and Iceland) includes universities, research institutions, business schools, both private and non-profit organizations. 

This membership enables AUA to enhance its network contacts, to exchange ideas and best practices across borders and disciplines and to learn and contribute to the use of Earth Observation/Copernicus data in various application fields. 

This is an excellent platform to foster collaboration among educational institutions and established commercial operators or entrepreneurs making innovation reach the market to benefit citizens and the future of our planet.

The goal of the network is to link research and academic institutions with authorities and service providers, facilitate collaborative research, develop content for lectures and training sessions, design traineeships, as well as generate materials that empower the next generation of researchers, scientists, and entrepreneurs to use Copernicus data and information to their full potential.

Currently, AUA is leading a 30-month project funded by the European Union’s ENI CBC Black Sea Basin Programme 2014-2020 called Copernicus assisted environmental monitoring across the Black Sea Basin — PONTOS. PONTOS aims to enable and enhance participation, knowledge, and skills of local and regional actors, scientists and government employees and citizens — an essential ingredient for enhancing the use of Copernicus products and services for the environmental monitoring of the Black Sea. The PONTOS operational platform and its tools will be publicly and freely available on the PONTOS website by the end of December 2022. 

The AUA Acopian Center for the Environment, a research center of the American University of Armenia, promotes the protection and restoration of the natural environment through research, education, and community outreach. The AUA Acopian Center’s focus areas include sustainable natural resource management, biodiversity and conservation, greening the built environment, clean energy, and energy efficiency, as well as information technology and the environment.