After years of dedicated service from Dr. Stacy Hammond in the YPARD Europe Team, as many of you know, Stacy’s work has proven to be an admirable legacy. We are going to sincerely miss Stacy's honesty and hard working attitude. She has contributed to strategic visioning for YPARD through times of administrative transition, from FAO to AGRIDEA and CZU, and taking up the mantle of leadership as YPARD Europe Coordinator. From intense strategic discussion, to planning workshops, to enjoying dinner together, we could count on Stacy to be straightforward and hard working.
We also now know that Dr. Libuška Mercl will not return as YPARD Europe Coordinator after her maternity leave. Libuška, however, will continue to provide financial project management support to YPARD at CZU. She is a pragmatic professional who made the hosting at CZU possible, providing YPARD essential infrastructure at a time when we needed it most, in addition to her strategic visioning through this transition. Libuška was intrumental in hosting several workshops at the Tropentag Annual Conference. She was also a driving force behind strategic collaborations of YPARD Europe, such as that with AGRINATURA. The YPARD Europe Internship Program took shape thanks to Libuška and Stacy’s collaborative leadership.
Stacy and Libuška's critical contribution to not only YPARD Europe's development, but also that of YPARD as a whole cannot be understated.
Stacy, in cooperation with Libuška, have trained many interns at CZU, providing a key opportunity for students of CZU to connect with our international network more deeply while honing their communications skills. Stacy also drove forward collaborative project applications with CZU and YPARD Europe, resulting in an ongoing collaboration on science reproducibility led by the Biogas Research Team at CZU. Stacy and Libuška were the creators of competitions and workshops on scientific communications, an area where they connected their scientific training with the YPARD network passionately. Key European partnerships, like that with Agrinatura, CZU, and others were diligently cultivated by Stacy and Libuška.
The YPARD team wishes you all the best for the future, and we look forward to continuing collaborations through your work at CZU and beyond!