HORIZON BLOG: European R&D policy newsbytes (Archived_01)

The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has announced the sites that will host the first European quantum computers.

The machines will be integrayed on site into existing supercomputers in Czechia, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and Poland.

The total planned investment is over €100 million, half of which comes from the EU and the other half from the 17 countries participating in EuroHPC.

Two former grantees of the European Research Council (ERC) have been awarded the 2022 Nobel prize in physics for “experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.

Alain Aspect of the CNRS optics institute and Anton Zeilinger, professor of experimental physics at the University of Vienna have both received ERC grants in the past. They share the prize with American theoretical physicist John Clauser.

Since its launch in 2007, the ERC has funded 12 Nobel laureates.

A former grantee of the European Research Council (ERC) has been awarded the 2022 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for his work studying genomes and human evolution.

Svante Pääbo is the director of the genetics department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and so far, he has received ERC grants totaling €4.4 million.

Since its launch in 2007, the ERC has funded 12 Nobel laureates. “I hope this can inspire more bright minds to go after their scientific dreams,” said ERC president Maria Leptin. “It is essential that we fund them, giving them the freedom to pursue their blue sky research.”

Research and innovation organisations in the EU should review their recruitment and HR policies and provide equality, diversity and inclusion training for staff and students, according to recommendations the European Commission published last week.

The report reviews emerging practices for inclusive gender equality in European research and innovation systems and comes with a list of recommendations for universities, research institutions and funders.

“The idea that a successful career in R&I is only the merit of hard work and motivation neglects underlying systemic barriers and biases that privilege some groups of people over the others,” said EU research commissioner Mariya Gabriel.

The report is available here.

The European Commission is continuing the roll out of European university alliances aimed at encouraging transnational higher education cooperation with a new €384 million call.  

The call includes funding for intensifying cooperation in existing university alliances, including adding new members, as well as the developing new alliances.  

Funded by the EU’s Erasmus+ education programme, the call includes two novelties: it is now fully open to higher education institutions in the Western Balkans and provides the EU’s Seal of Excellence to those proposals that score highly but fail to get funding due to budget constraints.

Research organisations wishing to take part in the European Commission-led push to reform how research is assessed in Europe can now sign up to the effort.  

Thus far, 51 organisations across Europe have signed the agreement which sets out the pathway for reforms to be co-created by a newly established coalition of universities, research centres and infrastructures, academies, funders, and other organisations working with research.  The first meeting of the coalition will take place on 1 December. 

The initial agreement was drafted by more than 350 organisations after the European Commission kicked off the process earlier this year. The goal is to find more holistic ways to assess research in Europe, moving from statistics centred around publications to measuring the value and impact of research.  

The European Commission today opened the third set of €200 million calls under the EU’s €7.5 billion Digital Europe programme.  

There’s €170 million for projects on data spaces, AI, cloud-to-edge infrastructure and digital education programmes, as well as €30 million for creating European Digital Innovation Hubs which will support private companies and the public sector in their digital transformation.  

The calls are open to businesses, public administrations, and other entities in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Ukraine.

The new initiative, funded with Italy’s share of EU recovery money, is open to young scientists who applied for fellowships from the EU's researcher mobility scheme, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), and were awarded the seal of excellence.  

The seal of excellence is a consolation prize awarded to proposals that were good enough to win funding but failed to make the cut due to limited budgets. EU member states are encouraged to find alternative funding for these projects. Italy’s new initiative will support 400 young researchers in Italian research organisations with €60 million. A similar scheme has also been set up in Romania with the help of the EU recovery fund.  

The House of Lords science and technology committee is urging newly appointed prime minister Liz Truss to appoint a science minister “at the earliest opportunity.”

Truss was appointed prime minister on 6 September but has yet to name a science minister. In a letter to Truss, the Lords science committee says a quick appointment of a science minister would help the UK government advance work on its plan to increase R&D expenditure to 2.4% of GDP.

The Lords’ letter comes at a time when the UK government is trying to negotiate a deal with the EU on science cooperation. Due to political disagreements in the aftermath of Brexit, the UK and the European Commission have yet to reach an agreement on the UK’s association to Horizon Europe.

The European Commission will officially launch a grant scheme for Ukrainian researchers at the end of October, the European University Association has announced last week. 

The scheme is funded under the EU's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and is meant to help Ukrainian researchers continue their work at academic and non-academic organisations in EU member states and Horizon Europe associated countries, while maintaining their connections to research and innovation communities in Ukraine.

The Commission will publish call documents on 28 September, but researchers will be able to submit applications only after 24 October. Once the online submission portal opens, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until all available funds are committed. Preliminary information for applicants is available on the MSCA4Ukraine website.

Researchers can go here to register for an online launch event and information session scheduled for 6 October.