1. Panel description (promotional)

Where do we sail from here? Funding maritime research and innovation in the EU’s next financial period

Opening panel of SuTra 2026 – International Conference on Sustainable Transport · 5 November 2026 · Hotel Admiral, Opatija

Europe is redrawing its map of research and innovation funding. From 2028, the EU’s next long-term budget (2028–2034) will rest on two closely linked instruments: FP10, the tenth Framework Program for Research and Innovation, proposed at €175 billion, and the new European Competitiveness Fund (ECF), designed to carry ideas from the laboratory through scale-up to deployment. For the maritime world – shipping lines, ports, shipyards, universities and start-ups – the rules being negotiated right now will decide what gets funded, who can compete, and how quickly research reaches the water.

The opening panel of SuTra 2026 brings together five voices that rarely share a stage: the scientist who built Croatia’s first Horizon Europe Teaming centre of excellence, the head of Croatia’s largest research institute and co-coordinator of the new EIT Water regional centre, a Member of the European Parliament working on the ECF, a global shipping and logistics company that must ultimately put innovations to work, and a regional innovation cluster that helps shape EU policy from the ground up.

Together, they will ask: how can the maritime regions of the Adriatic move from successful projects to lasting impact? What will FP10 and the ECF mean for widening countries such as Croatia? How can research results reach the vessels, terminals and supply chains that need them? And what must universities, industry and regions do today to be ready when the first calls open in 2028?

The panel also marks the conclusion of INNO2MARE, the Horizon Europe Excellence Hub through which the University of Rijeka and partners from Slovenia and Belgium have spent four years strengthening maritime innovation ecosystems in the Adriatic.

Join us in Opatija to discuss where European maritime innovation should sail next.

2. Panellists

Prof. Nikola Mišković, PhD – Director, CoE MARBLE

Nikola Mišković is a tenured Full Professor at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER), where he teaches control theory and marine robotics. He is Director of the Center of Excellence in Maritime Robotics and Technologies for Sustainable Blue Economy (CoE MARBLE), the first center of excellence in Croatia funded under the Horizon Europe Teaming for Excellence call. Led by FER with NTNU (Norway) and CNR (Italy), MARBLE secured €30 million as one of only 12 projects selected from 115 proposals, and is building pilot sites that include a smart marina in Rijeka. He has taken part in 20 European projects and coordinated several of them. Author of more than 130 papers on navigation, guidance, and control in marine robotics, he received the IEEE Croatia Section Award for Outstanding Engineering Contribution in 2020 and FER’s Annual Science Award in 2022.

Dr David M. Smith – Director General, Ruđer Bošković Institute (EIT Water)

David Matthew Smith is Director General of the Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI), Croatia’s largest public research institute, which he has led since 2018. A chemist by training, he joined RBI in 2004, where he led the Group for Quantum Organic Chemistry and later served as Assistant Director for International Collaboration and Projects. In 2016, he was Special Advisor for Research and Development to the Croatian Minister of Science, Education, and Sports. Under his leadership, RBI became a coordinator of CLC South, the Adriatic-Ionian regional center of EIT Water, marking the first time Croatia has hosted a regional seat of a European Institute of Innovation and Technology community. EIT Water, led by Aarhus University and worth €150 million over six years, unites 50 founding partners from 24 countries, while CLC South – seated in Zadar, with operational offices in Rijeka, Split and Dubrovnik – covers 10 countries and 26 partners.

Prof. Nikolina Brnjac, PhD – Member of the European Parliament

Nikolina Brnjac is a Croatian Member of the European Parliament in the European People’s Party (EPP) group, working in the Committee on Transport and Tourism (TRAN) and the Committee on Regional Development (REGI). In November 2025, she was appointed EPP rapporteur in the TRAN committee for the European Competitiveness Fund, the instrument at the heart of the EU’s 2028–2034 budget. She served as Croatia’s Minister of Tourism and Sport from 2020 to 2024, after working as State Secretary for Transport at the Ministry of the Sea, Transport and Infrastructure. Before entering public office, she built her career at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, where she earned her doctorate in transport and traffic technology and served as head of the Department of Intermodal Transport. Author of more than 50 papers on intermodal transport and logistics, she has made balanced development across all European regions and smart investment in research and innovation the focus of her ECF work.

Ivić Vodopija – Maersk

Ivić Vodopija leads Maersk’s business in Eastern Europe. Based in Rijeka, he has been a leading advocate of Maersk’s logistics corridor from the northern Adriatic through Rijeka to the Central European hinterland. That corridor paved the way for Rijeka Gateway, the deep-sea container terminal on the Zagreb pier developed by Maersk’s APM Terminals and Croatia’s ENNA Group, which welcomed its first commercial vessel in September 2025. Worth €380 million, it is the largest private logistics investment in Croatia, with a 20-meter-deep quay, remotely operated cranes, automation, and renewable energy, and a place in the Gemini Cooperation network of Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd. Vodopija brings to the panel the perspective of a global shipping and logistics company that must turn innovation into everyday operations and has made Rijeka a hub for distributing goods to markets from Gibraltar to Turkey.

Dr Roberta Padovan – M.A.R.E. Technology Cluster FVG

Roberta Padovan is a project manager at the Maritime, Aerospace, Renewable Energies Technology Cluster of Friuli Venezia Giulia (M.A.R.E. TC FVG, formerly mareFVG) in Monfalcone, Italy, working in innovation and business services and in national and international networks. Founded in 2009, the cluster is a public–private consortium of companies, universities, research centers, and training institutions, and the reference actor for maritime technologies in Friuli Venezia Giulia’s smart specialization strategy. She holds a PhD in Chemical and Energy Technologies from the University of Udine and worked for several years at CETENA, the Italian center for naval engineering studies, before joining the cluster in 2022. Her work centers on the green transition of shipping, including the Friuli Venezia Giulia demo-case on hydrogen in shipping within the Vanguard Initiative and the cross-border North Adriatic Hydrogen Valley. On the panel, she represents the regional innovation communities that, through networks such as the Vanguard Initiative and the Waterborne Technology Platform, turn local needs into proposals for EU policy and funding priorities.