BU Research Blog

Thank you to everyone who was able to attend our Horizon Europe event on 12 February. For those who missed it, the presentation is available on the RDS SharePoint site.

We briefly touched on a question regarding UKRO services, and here are further details on this matter, as recently communicated by UKRO.

UKRO has made changes to its service provision for subscribers in the current financial year. They are in the process of moving towards the UKRO future state and expect to communicate to subscribers in March what we can expect from April 2025 onwards.

The subscriber round-tables held in September 2024 have contributed to these plans, as well as ongoing discussions with the UKRO Steering Group. UKRO is extremely grateful for the feedback received and for the patience and understanding of subscribers during this time.

At present, UKRO is unable to allocate a named European Advisor to all subscribers and is instead focusing resources on responding to enquiries and producing portal content.

For those with more specific questions related to the Pillar II call topics, as mentioned during yesterday’s presentation, I would suggest getting in touch with the UK National Contact Points, who provide support for each specific area.

Just a quick reminder about UKRO: The UK Research Office (UKRO) supports the UK research and innovation community and works with partners across government and stakeholders to maximise UK engagement in the Horizon Europe programme. UKRO provides subscription-based advisory services for research organisations, and BU is one of UKRO’s subscribing organisations.

UKRO also offers free UK National Contact Point services for those interested in Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, the European Research Council, Widening Participation, and COST. However, some sections of the UKRO website are only available to staff at subscribing organisations. Any BU employee can access UKRO services by creating their own profile.

We encourage all BU academic staff to register – it’s a quick and simple process that only requires an institutional email address. Registered users receive tailored news articles on the latest EU funding and policy developments, as well as factsheets on various strands and aspects of EU research, innovation, and higher education activities.

In the meantime, I will continue to keep an eye on the 2025 work programmes and inform you of any updates we receive.