On 7th December 2024, Anna Spiteri and Eng. Dirk De Ketelaere celebrated the 30th anniversary of the founding of their company Integrated Resources Management at the Sheer Bastion in Senglea.

They were joined by their esteemed colleagues of 20 years from the Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir, Türkiye. From the left of the cover image for this news post: Mert Can Günaçtı, Hulya Boyacioglu; Cem Polat Cetinkaya; Filiz Barbaros; Anna & Dirk; Gülay Onuşluel Gül and Ali Gul.

The celebration was preceded by a two-day, well-attended Symposium on coping with droughts in the agricultural sector in the Mediterranean Region, held at MCAST, during 5 and 6 December. This event was to showcase the achievements-to-date of both the PRIMA funded Mara-Mediterra and the Xjenza Malta-TUBITAK funded UNIMED research and innovation projects. In her keynote talk, Anna took the opportunity to take a look back at the extensive experience gained from working in 20 EU funded environmental research projects, with over 200 partner organizations in 43 countries, in 5 continents.

Several speakers from Malta, Greece, and Turkey contributed to the success of the symposium but the highlight was Dirk’s innovative research in the UNIMED project presenting the outcomes of a drought analysis covering a 180-year period of rainfall observations in Malta from 1843 until the present day.