SDRC EUNF success

Sustainable Design Research Centre (Zulfiqar Khan and Mark Hadfield) reported the success of BU EUNF application for funding on March 19th 2012 through the BU Blog. The award played a significant role to achieve the objectives of the original plan as

  • To initiate links for the proposed programme
  • Gauge interests in the identified partners in terms of the proposed research programme
  • Identify more industrial links for collaborations
  • Identify relevant resources and expertise
  • Identify the most relevant EU funding stream
  • Define goals for the proposed research
  • Apply for the EU consortium fund as a next milestone
  • Develop an EU/relevant funding body bid

Monday 2nd July 2012 was scheduled for the BU-Tank Museum EU Conference here at BU. A successful conference was held with key representatives from the following organisations

  • BU
  • The Tank Museum, Bovington, UK
  • Oxford University, UK
  • Military Museum, Munster Panzer Museum, Germany
  • Finnish Tank Museum, Finland
  • Swedish Tank Museum, Sweden
  • Belgian Military Museum
  • Military Museum, Dresden, Germany

It was planned to apply for EU networking/consortium funds to take off the proposal development process. Various actions were identified and linked with the expertise/resources. Following from the discussions it was agreed to define a roadmap for the newly formed consortium in terms of sustainable methodology of conserving historic military vehicles in the museum environments across EU.

The following relevant EU funding strands were identified as potential for targeting.

  • ARTEMIS Call 2012 was investigated to see if it was useful in terms of the research.
  • Strategies and Projects for Research & Innovation, Scientific & Management Partnerships in research and innovation, Open calls for proposals of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Development was investigated to identify relevant strand and specific call.
  • COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is one of the longest-running European frameworks supporting cooperation among scientists and researchers across Europe calls from this initiative were investigated.

COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) open call has been identified to be targeted for further research collaborative activities.

A proposal is currently being developed to submit an application to this call. A meeting with the Tank Museum Director Richard Smith, Professor Mark Hadfield and Dr Zulfiqar Khan has been scheduled on the 31st of July 2012 to start developing proposal for the above mentioned open call due by the end of September 2012.

This was a significant opportunity in terms of initiating new links across EU museums and key stakeholders. This also provided an influential platform for disseminating and promoting the existing research undertaken in collaboration with The Tank Museum. The newly formed collaborative links with the DSTL (MOD) has already yielded into a DEC-DSTL match funded PhD studentship which is a significant milestone Further links have already been followed to strengthen the newly developed group, which will be important in future funding applications and securing external income.