Privacy Statement

About us

The XIXth EUCARPIA Biometrics in Plant Breeding Conference has a website (https://highlanderlab.github.io/EUCARPIA2025BiometricsPlantBreeding/) (“EUCARPIA website”) at the Roslin Institute, Easter Bush Campus, Midlothian, University of Edinburgh (the “University”).

The University is a charitable body registered in Scotland under registration number SC005336, incorporated under the Universities (Scotland) Acts and having its main administrative offices at Old College, South Bridge Edinburgh, EH8 9YL, UK. The University is the controller (as that term is defined in the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018) of your personal data.

The University’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted at: dpo@ed.ac.uk.

We are committed to protecting your privacy. It is important that you understand how we look after your personal data and how we make sure that we meet our legal obligations to you under the UK General Data Protection Regulation, the Data Protection Act 2018 and other UK data protection rules (including associated guidance). This privacy policy outlines how the University (acting via EUCARPIA) will use, store and share your personal data, and supplements any other fair processing or privacy notices provided to you from time to time.

To whom does this privacy statement apply?

This privacy statement applies to all individuals who visit the EUCARPIA website, or who contact us with respect to EUCARPIA by post, telephone, e-mail or other means (including other electronic means), or who have a contract in place with the University for matters relating to EUCARPIA (however please note that separate terms and conditions may also be applicable here).

What personal data do we collect from you?

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data or information about you which we have grouped together follows:

“Identity Data” such as first name, last name, social media username (in particular LinkedIn or email+ information) or similar identifier, passport details, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
“Contact Data” such as home or work address, email address and telephone numbers.
“Financial Data” such as includes bank account details.
“Technical Data” such internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access our Website.
“Profile Data” such as your username and password, your interests and preferences.
“Usage Data” such as how you use the EUCARPIA website.
“Marketing and Communications Data” such as your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences.

With the exception of information about your health (where we collect special categories of personal data relating to allergies, intolerances and preferences with regard to catering and for details of any disabilities so that we can make arrangements to accommodate you at an event), we do not collect any “special categories of personal data” about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

We use different methods to collect personal data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact, Profile Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email, via social media or otherwise. You may give us your Usage Data by using https://highlanderlab.github.io/EUCARPIA2025BiometricsPlantBreeding/. This includes personal data you provide when you:
- contact us through our website;
- request marketing to be sent to you;
- give us some feedback.
Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our https://highlanderlab.github.io/EUCARPIA2025BiometricsPlantBreeding/, we may automatically collect Technical and/or Usage Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, and other similar technologies, including for example Google Analytics.

How will we use your personal data?

We will use your personal data to:

Keep you up to date with news and progress about EUCARPIA, and communicate with you about other events (such as webinars, workshops and future EUCARPIA conferences), opportunities and other services of interest to you;
To include any abstract that you may wish to include at conferences which are run by EUCARPIA;
Ensure that content from the EUCARPIA website is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
Administer, support, improve and develop the EUCARPIA website;
Analyse usage information we collect during your visit to the EUCARPIA website in order to improve user experience;
Carry out collaborative research and work pertaining to EUCARPIA in general;
Establish, administer and run working parties, groups or committees/sub-committees for the benefit of EUCARPIA, including jointly with third party collaborators, such as research institutes, NGOs and other organisations;
Develop and improve the services we provide to you and communications and interactions with you, including by requesting, reviewing and using feedback you provide to us;
Book travel and / or accommodation for you with respect to any EUCARPIA workshops or visits to the University; and
Reimburse you for any agreed costs or fees.

Legal information

When processing your information we use one of the following lawful bases:

Legitimate interests

We may process your information under the lawful basis that it is in our legitimate business interests for the purposes set out above, including to ensure effective communication with you in order to keep you up to date with news and progress about EUCARPIA and let you know about events, opportunities and other services of interest to you, support and improve the EUCARPIA website and to carry out research, collaborative work and consultation for the benefit of EUCARPIA; or

Contract

We may process your information under the lawful basis of contract, whereby the processing is necessary for a contract you have with us, or because you have asked us to take specific steps before entering into a contract. (processing of personal data captured through booking forms for EUCARPIA events typically fall into this category when you supply information because you want to attend an EUCARPIA event).

Information about our website

https://highlanderlab.github.io/EUCARPIA2025BiometricsPlantBreeding/ may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and we are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit. We use cookies and other technologies to improve our service to you. You can adjust what usage information we collect from you by setting your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of https://highlanderlab.github.io/EUCARPIA2025BiometricsPlantBreeding/ website may become inaccessible or not function properly. When you leave the https://highlanderlab.github.io/EUCARPIA2025BiometricsPlantBreeding/ website or click on links that lead to external websites we are unable to control what cookies are set in any way. You will need to set your cookie preferences for those sites as well.

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the section headed “How Will We Use Your Personal Data?”

Service providers acting as processors who provide IT and system administration services.
Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
Any relevant regulatory authority or law enforcement agency, including HM Revenue & Customs, Trading Standards, Advertising Standards Authority, courts or tribunals who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
Third party service providers, such as travel agents, airlines, hotels, travel companies, suppliers, contractors and/or consultants.
Third party collaborators, such as research institutes, NGOs and other organisations with whom we may collaborate.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with applicable law. We do not allow our third party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International transfers

EUCARPIA does not transfer personal data outside of the United Kingdom except with regard to:

Your personal data insofar as it relates to the submission of abstracts will be stored using a Google form;
Service providers, such as hotels and/or airlines which require your personal data for the purposes of booking;
consultants or contractors we engage for the purposes set out above (How We will Use Your Personal Data); and
Third party collaborators, such as research institutes, NGOs and other organisations with whom we may collaborate, including in the USA, for the purposes set out above (How We will Use Your Personal Data)

This may involve transferring personal data outside the UK to countries which have laws that do not provide the same level of data protection as UK law.

Where we do transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring that the following safeguards are in place:

We will transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed by the UK to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data; and/or
There are appropriate safeguards in place, together with enforceable rights and effective legal remedies for you. For example we may use specific standard contractual terms approved for use in the UK which give the transferred personal data the same protection as it has in the UK, such as the International Data Transfer Agreement/ Addendum to the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses for international data transfers. To obtain a copy of these contractual safeguards, please contact us the contact details below.

How long will we keep your information?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. We do not use profiling or automated decision-making processes. If you have any questions, please contact EUCARPIA Administration: eucarpia.biometrics19@gmail.com or the University’s DPO: dpo@ed.ac.uk.

The data protection policy is continued at: https://data-protection.ed.ac.uk/notice .