It will provide strategic direction and leadership to the project by acting as a pro-active interface between the research community and the aquaculture industry. IRAP’s major tasks will consist of i) providing recommendations about focus areas for use in Transnational Access (TNA) calls following the European Aquaculture Technology and Innovation Platform (EATiP) Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda (SRIA), and ii) assessing individual outputs from research within AQUAEXCEL2020 and from TNA projects to promote promising results that are of benefit to the aquaculture sector. Currently, the panel consists of seven industry experts, nine AQUAEXCEL2020 work package leaders and five affiliates. We will be actively extending the panel when additional needs for expertise are identified.