A European alliance of life-science research centres, EU-LIFE, is arguing for strengthened excellence and enhanced collaborative research across FP9. They call upon the Commission to focus on human capital and the early stages of innovation to provide fuel to the innovation process
EU-LIFE has called for a strengthening of the excellence criteria throughout FP9, as well as enhanced collaboration at the early stage of innovation, to fuel the innovation cycle. They also asked for a renewed focus on human capital to better connect, attract, train and de-silo throughout the innovation pipeline.
They advise that this wider net for excellence should recognise and support small-scale research infrastructures. The paper finishes by suggesting that the low overall success rates in Horizon 2020 point to a pool of excellence in Europe which is underfunded and underutilised.
From the text:
“The European Innovation Council (EIC), should focus on bringing research and innovation together – working at the INTERSECTION of research and innovation."
“Alongside ESFRI, FP9 should create a generic support programme that promotes the development of European networks of small scale scientific platforms focusing not only on the technology per se, but on their interoperability, complementarity and access.”
The full report is available here.
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