The interaction between science and the media is a key element in the public opinion’s understanding of research issues and of citizens’ consensus on public spending for research. Food research issues have been recently at the heart of heated debates and often subject to misrepresentations partially due to over-simplification by the media or to insufficient involvement of scientists in communication to the large public. This is a bottleneck that still hinders citizens’ comprehension of major scientific themes currently discussed at European or national level. The MAITRE project intends to act on researchers’ readiness to manage communication processes oriented to the large public. The rationale is to transfer from the journalists to the researchers parts of the translation process that is needed to bring scientific information from the laboratories to the common people. If scientists gain a full understanding of the information production processes in today’s media (newspapers, tv, web, etc.), they will be able to handle their input in communication in a more effective way, combining soundness of scientific information with the necessary level of clarity adapted to the needs of the general public. The project will revolve around a cycle of training sessions to be delivered by journalists and media experts to a target group of roughly 600 researchers from organisations involved in KBBE funded projects. Trainings will be organised in several countries and in different languages, paying attention to ensure a wide coverage of the EU, including countries of the enlarged Europe and of different sub-themes addressed by the KBBE programme. The project has potential to considerably step up researchers’ capacity to explain the scope and results of their activities, thus contributing to bring science closer to the citizens and these to a better understanding of why the integration of European research resources is beneficial to the whole European society.