In 2011 we have welcomed two highly relevant institutes as new partners in the SENSE network: the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) of the University of Twente.

The SENSE Research School is proud to announce that NWO has awarded the SENSE Graduate Programme on 'Complex Dynamics in Human – Environment Systems' with a subsidy of € 800.000. This programme offers an opportunity to excellent MSc students to continue their research ambitions by writing their own PhD research proposal and choosing their own supervisor. This NWO programme is meant to be a pilot activity, and SENSE expects to continue this programme beyond the initial grant.

To further improve the wide SENSE network, SENSE is continually upgrading our communication tools. A major step has now been taken by creating interactive groups for all SENSE Research Clusters as part of the SENSE Moodle server. The overview of SENSE Research Clusters can be found at: http://moodle.sense.nl/course/category.php?id=12.

A guideline for using SENSE Moodle and how it can benefit your Research Cluster may be found HERE.

As an indication of what to expect from SENSE in 2012, we can announce here one major new initiative: the SENSE Summer Academy, which will bring together SENSE meetings with newly developed SENSE courses in one dedicated week in June 2012 – completed with a rolling and rocking SENSE party! More information will follow soon.

Also, we are planning in 2012 the SENSE Science Market event, which will bring together representatives from environmental research (junior and senior SENSE researchers) with representatives of government agencies and ministries. This event will combine the SENSE network function with its bridge function between science and society.

The fact that SENSE continues to grow considerably is reflected in the number of participants in the SENSE A1 course. In 2011, this course took place in March (in Apeldoorn) with a total number of 50 participants and in September (in Delft) with a total number of 60 participants. We are also pleased to report that this course is evaluated as good to very good. Link to picture.

SENSE is continually developing a growing number of relevant courses. An overview of the courses that were organized in 2011 (and will be organized in 2012-2013) can be found HERE. On the other hand it is quite clear that SENSE could not organize all possible courses that may in fact be quite relevant for some SENSE PhD courses. To manage this dynamic and to hopefully provide as much as possible the most relevant courses, we have now issued a survey to create an overview of courses that would be important to organize. Thus, we hope to further improve the SENSE course offer so as to hopefully provide the best possible benefit for all SENSE PhD students.

Again in 2011, a large number of SENSE PhD students has been very active in planning and developing their individual SENSE A2 project. To give an impression of the events in 2011 that were organized as a result of these initiatives by SENSE PhD students:

• "Modelling and observing earth system compartments", organized by SENSE PhD students on 22 February 2011
• Imares PhD Day "bottom-up” (on Texel), organized by SENSE PhD students on 25 November 2011
• "SENSE Writing Week", organized by SENSE PhD students on 31 October–4 November 2011
• and upcoming on 1 March 2012: "Water cycle at different scales", organized by SENSE PhD students.

As part of the Erasmus Mundus project Environmentportal in which SENSE has been involved together with Trinity College Dublin and University of Eastern Finland, SENSE has contributed to the development of a new course finder tool which is now operational (and growing fast) at ShortCoursesPortal. Here you may find relevant courses which are offered by other relevant networks also.

The SENSE network could obviously strongly benefit from new social media possibilities. Therefore SENSE now has a growing presence at LinkedIn with a separate SENSE Member Group and SENSE Alumni Group. Besides this, a group of SENSE PhD students now also has initiated a Facebook presence of SENSE.

In 2011, the SENSE PhD Award competition had a particularly special outcome: we have two ex aequo Laureates of the SENSE PhD Award 2011.

The jury has decided to award it to both Dr. Annemiek ter Heijne (Environmental Technology, Wageningen University) and Dr. Sarian Kosten (Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality, Wageningen University).

On 19-21 October 2011 the Water Management Group of Twente University has organized a very successful three-day IGS-SENSE Conference on Resilient Societies - Governing Risk and Vulnerability. For Water, Energy and Climate Change.

Besides this, the newly developed structure of SENSE Research Clusters is now paying off increasingly in a dynamic landscape of scientific activities. In 2011, 7 SENSE Research Clusters have organized meetings:

• 05-01-2011: Cluster VIII Global change
• 13-01-2011: Cluster VI Landscape ecology
• 22-02-2011: Cluster VIII Global change, Symposium Earth System Components
• 15-03-2011: Cluster I Micropollutants, Workshop vlamvertragers
• 11-05-2011: Cluster XIII Land use, PhD day
• 26/29-09-2011: Cluster X Governance, PhD Training School Earth System Governance
• 26-10-2011: Cluster XV Nano, PhD day

Following the successful SENSE conference on “Climate Proofing Cities” an active process of discussing, writing and reviewing took place. Now this will soon result in a Special Issue of the journal Resources Conservation & Recycling. As soon as this special issue is published, we will of course announce this on the SENSE website and in a next edition of the SENSE e-News.