Professional Development Advanced - 20161

The agri-food sector needs to renew its workforce to be able to stand the future challenges of the food system. Sustainability, resilience, innovation, new and/or emerging technology but also the lack of an entrepreneurial culture are barriers for an effective and progressive transformation of the food system. Planetary and local food-related challenges require a set of new skills able to promote solutions in the immediate future. The agri-food sector workforce, the private sector and academia are asked to innovate and transform the food system with the goal to produce sustainable food and make European ci􀆟zen healthier. Professional Development Advanced (PDA) capitalised on the success of educational programmes developed under BP 2019 and 2020 to propose more effective and impactful programmes with a solid competence framework, to form innovators able to tacked the most urgent challenges of the food system by coupling advanced training with challenge-based model and innovative learning tools and systems. This activity will offer three successful professional innovative training programmes for different constituents (woman entrepreneurs, post-doctoral and young professional, advanced entrepreneurs). Moreover, it proposes a well-established programme addressing technical competences and skills on algae biotech and five new technical schemes embracing the EIT Food competence framework to demonstrate market demand and training for a new generation of innovators able to create a resilient more sustainable food system. An associated credential scheme will give the participating cohorts the tools to boost career prospect, enhance their skills portfolio by upskilling and reskilling, and aid staff retention. Learning interventions are targeted to high quality innovative/cross-sectoral activities and to entrepreneurial approaches embracing systems thinking and creative thinking as well as advance technical capabilities.