Welcome to our research funding newsletter

After two decades of covering the nuts and bolts of European research and innovation policy, we are taking a step forward to launch a new service to help our audience sift through an increasingly heavy information landscape on international opportunities for research and innovation funding and collaboration.

The fundamental mission of Science|Business is to foster cross-border, cross-sectoral cooperation in research and innovation, through our Newsletters, our Network, and our events. Based on that experience, we have learned that both public and private research institutions are having trouble reaching beyond their typical networks to find, understand and attract funding.

The explanation for that growing difficulty is rather simple. Since 2004, we have been mostly covering the politics of science and technology in Europe. But the 2016 UK referendum on leaving the EU, Donald Trump’s stint in the White House, the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and rising geopolitical tensions between the US and China, have upended the rules of engagement for international cooperation in research and innovation.

Not-so-suddenly, open and free cross-border cooperation has become the exception, not the norm. As science became another weapon in the arsenal of the new geopolitical tussles, researchers began struggling to understand which institutions, in which countries, on what topics and with what funding sources they can work with.

In parallel, research and innovation policy became more politicised and public funding programmes, such as Horizon Europe, had to satisfy an increasing number of top-down requirements stemming from urgent political agendas.

In Europe, researchers and innovators were called on to contribute more to topics related to climate change and the digital transition. At the same time, public R&D programmes got more complex, with new funding streams being added to an ever-expanding list of calls, topics and rules on international engagement.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, the call to researchers and innovators was for novel military technologies. The EU had already launched a fully-fledged defence R&D programme – the European Defence Fund (EDF) – while NATO set up a dedicated accelerator for innovation in defence. And now, the EU is mulling the possibility of opening up Horizon Europe to dual use research.

As political leaders discuss strategies for resurrecting the EU economy, more change is in the offing. A reform of the EU Single Market, the creation of a Capital Markets Union, and enhanced borrowing powers for the European Commission could have a significant impact on how R&D projects at higher technology readiness levels are funded and how the private sector invests in innovation.

I have personal experience of what is at stake here. I was born in Romania a few months after communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was executed and, for as long as I can remember, I have been dreaming about what the west has to offer and the collapsing regime of a mad man couldn’t.

I got to witness in real time how the free circulation of information and people, and intellectual exchanges with the west, transformed my country from a place that resembled today’s North Korea, to a country where academia, industry and civil society are thriving.

I know there’s still a lot work to do, but the progress made by Romania and neighboring countries over the past three decades is astonishing, and that progress would not have been possible without strengthening ties with western Europe through EU membership, with the US and Canada through NATO, and with other developed economies around the world, and engaging in the scientific and economic cooperation that is so sorely needed today.   

The new service

This growing complexity, along with the corresponding political shifts are the main reasons why we are now leveraging our expertise in covering the politics of science and technology to help the research and innovation community navigate this expanding maze of funding information more easily.

To date, we at Science|Business have focused on news and analysis of the main policy stories in research and innovation in Europe and around the world. But we want to go beyond that and offer a dedicated newsletter tailored for research and innovation professionals, for those seeking funding and grants across Europe and beyond. 

As of this week, we are rolling out the Science|Business Funding Newswire, a new source for in-depth analyses of grant programmes and their policy background, expert interviews, and insights from Europe’s most prolific grant winners. 

With this new service, we will use our expertise and analytical capacity so you and your organisation can follow where the public and the private money is going and which collaborative deals you can get in on.

But, most importantly, this new service is about keeping lines of communication and cooperation open in an increasingly turbulent world.

I hope that, with the newly launched Science|Business Funding Newswire, we will be able to make a small but important contribution to that conversation, by helping you navigate and understand the increasingly complex world of science and technology funding.

The first edition is available here. Learn more about this project here.

Florin Zubașcu is Executive Editor at Science|Business and has been covering European research and innovation policy since 2014.