Horizon Europe is well underway, but the world of European R&D policy goes well beyond the confines of the €95.5 billion R&D programme. EU climate, digital, agriculture and regional policies all have significant research and innovation components. National governments often come up with new R&D policies, decide to fund new research avenues, and set up international cooperation deals. This blog aims to keep you informed on all of that and more.
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The Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE), which brings together European learned societies and research organisations, is calling on EU member states to support young researchers whose careers have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
ISE hopes EU research ministers, who are convening in Paris this week, will respond to the call for a conference discussing the precarity faced by young researchers during the pandemic, an idea that was first floated around by the former European Research Council President Jean-Pierre Bourguignon in November.
The precariousness of research careers is a growing issue in Europe, with young researchers complaining of being low salaries, lack of permanent contracts and job security, which can lead talent to leave academia or seek science careers in other parts of the world.
The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities is urging the European Commission and national agencies to help universities meet the expectations of the new EU student mobility programme, Erasmus+.
The new seven-year framework for Erasmus+ provides new types of support for students such as top-up grants for environmentally-friendly ways of travelling, short-term and blended mobility, and grant top-ups for applicants with fewer opportunities. Universities are reportedly struggled to meet these new mobility expectations as Erasmus+ funding in 2021 remained at 2018 levels.
The Guild hopes universities can work with the Commission and national authorities to find long-term and immediate fixes to the arising problems, such as national co-funding, greater flexibility at reporting stage, and support mechanisms to reach the top-up targets.
German companies have demanded that Switzerland be allowed to associate to Horizon Europe regardless of wider political disagreement between Bern and Brussels.
In a recent report, the Federation of German Industries said that "Switzerland should be able to participate on a par with other third countries (such as Israel, Turkey and EEA countries) irrespective of the overall relations between the EU and Switzerland."
Currently, talks are on ice, after the failure to strike a broader deal on the relationship between Brussels and Bern.
The Commission has explicitly tied Horizon association to progress on this wider picture.
The Horizon Europe-supported industrial partnership for innovative medicines and health technologies is looking for science and health experts to join its new Science and Innovation Panel (SIP) that will set the initiative's priorities and design calls for proposals.
The SIP will bring together the organisations participating in the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) – the successor of Horizon 2020’s Innovation Medicines Initiative – such as the European Commission, health industries, national representatives and the scientific community. The call for 10 experts is open until 21 February 2022.
The IHI is set to formally launch its new seven-year framework for financing large-scale projects in a bid to advance health research and innovation in areas of unmet needs this Wednesday.
A group of 94 organisations have submitted a research and innovation manifesto for debate in the plenary of the Conference on the Future of Europe.
The manifesto is backed by over 600 universities, 400 resaerch institutes, 140 business associations and 15 regional and local bodies.
The signatories say the future of Europe will largely depend on its performance in science and technology. “In the coming years, research and innovation will be crucial to steer Europe’s recovery, preparedness and resilience, accelerate the twin green and digital transitions, and support the EU’s aspirations of open strategic autonom,” the manifesto says.
The conference plenary will take place on 21 and 22 to debate the first 90 recommendations adopted in the past weeks by the European citizens’ panels on European democracy and climate change and health.
The full text and the list of supporters are available at researchforeurope.eu.
A total of 42 projects will be funded by the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) first transition grants call for turning EU funded research into commercially viable products.
Of the 42 projects, 29 were selected in a bottom-up call for projects, while another 13 answer the EIC’s challenge-driven calls for energy harvesting and storage technologies as well as medical technologies and devices.
Project examples include a new type of battery for long duration storage; an affordable, compact, multi-modal and high-throughput photonic-chip; and commercialising a code-free, gesture-controlled robot programming technology.
The money provided by the EU’s new innovation fund, the EIC, will go to projects that draw on the results of research previously funded by the EIC Pathfinder and the European Research Council’s proof of concept grants.
A total of 292 proposals were submitted in this first call which invited applications from single organisations, such as research teams, SMEs and spin outs, as well as consortia of up to five partners from different countries.
The country’s VTT Technical Research Centre is investing €18 million in a new centre for piloting carbon neutral innovations for transport and industry, to be completed in the city of Espoo in 2024.
The goal is to give companies a space to scale innovation to the market in hydrogen, clean and energy-efficient transport, industry and built environment sectors, facilitating the transition towards clean energy domestically and enabling exports.
“We will have people working on things like the interplay of traffic, households, industry and energy production in the energy system of the future, all under one roof,” said Jussi Manninen, executive vice president at VTT. “The development of winning solutions requires close cooperation between industry, start-ups and research actors, and the piloting centre will provide a good framework for that.”
The country is considering reforming laws governing science careers to improve stability, reduce administrative burdens and reinforce the transfer of knowledge, and asks citizens to have their say on how this should be done.
Proposed changes include reducing the age of entry for postdoctoral researchers, introducing a new type of indefinite work contracts and reducing the precarity faced by early-career researchers.
Spain’s reforms aim to boost the attractiveness of research careers as countries around the world enter ‘a war for talent’ trying to lure researchers through new academic recruitment programmes, visa schemes and open-door policies.
Europeans are invited to submit existing sustainability, inclusiveness and aesthetics projects that reflect the goals of the EU’s green deal to this year’s New European Bauhaus (NEB) Prizes contest.
In this year’s competition, 18 winners will be selected to receive up to €30,000 across four categories: reconnecting with nature; regaining a sense of belonging; prioritising the places and people that need it most; and fostering long-term, lifecycle and integrated thinking in the industrial ecosystem.
The European Commission invites candidates of all nationalities and backgrounds to submit their examples of inspiring green transformations until 28 February.
The NEB is the Commission’s attempt to put a cultural twist on the EU’s green deal, and the prizes awarded in this competition celebrate existing projects that are in line with the NEB’s purpose.
The €5 million Horizon Prize for breakthrough early-warning technologies for epidemics was awarded to the EarlY WArning System for Mosquito-borne Diseases (EYWA) project.
EYWA helps fight mosquito-borne diseases by enhancing the surveillance and control of the mosquitoes’ abundance and pathogens’ transmission using entomological, epidemiological, Earth Observation, crowd and ancillary geospatial data. It has been deployed in thousands of villages where is has proven to help prevent the spread of diseases.
The €5 million prize was launched by the EU’s innovation fund, the European Innovation Council, in 2018 to find and award breakthrough innovations in early warning systems for vector-borne disease epidemics that affect over 1 billion people each year.
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