Hello All,

The past week has been a great success for the alumni network. The hearing of the Alumni Associations business plan was held in London last month. President, Prageeth Jayathissa, and treasurer, Ognyan Iliev, presented in front of Climate-KICs CEO Mary Ritter, RIC director Aled Thomas and the education director, Ebrahim Mohamed. The scope of events and workshops planned for the members of the Alumni Association impressed, and the collective positivity about this years plans were evidenced by the acceptance of the new business plan. There are exciting changes already underway and youll be the first to hear about these developments in due course. If you are not part of the Alumni Network or would like to receive more information about it, or just have an awesome idea you would like to realise, dont hesitate to contact them through the medium of email alukic@climate-kic.org or just click on their (soon to be re-launched) website.

Student Stories:
Marjolaine Bouchy, Journey alumni from 2013, has continued our student stories series with a blog

post about her recent mobility experience in Oslo, Norway. She blogs about her experiences away
from her native France and how Climate-KIC has helped her deepen her understanding of climate change mitigation and adaption. If you have received mobility funding and would like to write a post about your experiences, please contact Phillip Wood.

London is the venue for Climate-KICs professional start-up advice dropin centre. Held on the 2nd Tuesday of every month at the Imperial Incubator, they welcome any start-up of any stage with any problem. Climate-KICs UK entrepreneurship lead, Andrew Burford, business

coach, Richard Barker and our entrepreneur-in-residence, Stephen Voller are there to help. If you would like to book an appointment please email Liz with a line or two about what you would like to cover in the session and we will match you to one of our experts.

Dates for your diary: 5 February 2014: Got an innovative business idea which will substantially reduce
greenhouse gas emissions? Havent yet founded the company but are ready to? If you or a business partner lives or plans to live in Switzerland then click here to find out how you can be supported. Up to th three ideas can be submitted but be quick, deadline for submission is 5 Feb.

14th February 2014: Members of the Alumni Association will be attending the Cleantech Forum this
year in Sweden and we want to send two people there. If you would like to apply for one of the volunteer positions please follow this two-stage process. First, send an email to Michele Parad who can confirm if you can be a volunteer at the event. Once accepted by Michele, please email Maria Peeva with a brief email on why you would like to represent the Climate-KIC Alumni Association in Stockholm and how it would benefit you. Dont forget to attach a picture of yourself (so we know who you are), along with Micheles acceptance email. Deadline is Valentines Day.

Spark! 3rd March: The Netherlands will be hosting the next Spark!
session which will focus on topic of Extreme draught periods in Europe. The event will be delivered by the well-known Dutch meteorologist Reinier van den Berg. Three weeks before the lecture, Van den Berg will introduce an extreme event of draught and the possible corresponding scenarios for transport, forest-fires, agriculture and the access to drinking water in a video, to be released on the website. The lecture with a live broadcast to the different Climate KIC co-locations (CLCs) will start with a serious game around the extreme weather event of a long period of draught. During the three weeks in advance and at the workshop at 3 March participants will come up with solutions to deal with the extreme event and will pitch these to the other CLCs The serious game starts at 17.00h. The life broadcast of the pitches starts at 18.00h. Location: Groene zaal, W.C. van Unnik Building, Utrecht Science Park, Heidelberglaan 2, Utrecht. At 18.30h More details will arrive in your inbox from your local education manager.

Local Representatives Meeting

For very first time in the history of Climate-KICs Alumni Association, the regional representatives from every region and centre gathered in Utrecht, the Netherlands, to discuss goals for 2014. The local representatives were there to present the yearly strategy and schedule a series of local events and meetings. They will foster different activities in the CLCs and RICs and engage with the local communities.

The meeting brought up topics like Journey 2014 representation, more efficient ways of communication, financial independency and a job platform for the Alumni. The inter-pillar collaboration was also emphasised and negotiations with Climate-KIC start-ups and partners have been actioned in Berlin and the Netherlands. Access to external events will be also supported by the Association and they aim to give young entrepreneurs and enablers a chance to network with the clean-tech world. More Greenhouse places will be offered for alumni in order to work on their projects from the PiP and Journey programmes. The Alumni Association is always looking for volunteers who would like to be part of the local representative team. Please click here to see a list here of the local reps in every region - do not hesitate to contact them any time.

Platform news:
The first quarterly newsletter from the Climate-KIC platform, Making Transitions Happen, contains the latest news, events and opportunities for the alumni to get further involved with Climate-KIC and the MTH platform. This month has a special from London-based alumni, Christoph Mazur.

PhD Bootcamp video now on YouTube

Berlin held its first PhD boot camp which saw 18 participants from across German and Sweden pitch their PhD thesis research idea. You can now see the highlights from all their pitches on this video. Climate-KIC