Tagged / FP7

EC Media- related i2i Audiovisual funding available

The EC has launched a call for proposals for the development, distribution, promotion and training of i2i audiovisual under the Media 2007 Programme.

The objective of this support is to facilitate independent European production companies’ access to funding from credit and financial institutions, by co-financing part of the costs of:

  • insurance for audiovisual productions: Module 1 — Support the ‘Insurance’ item in a production budget,
  • completion guarantee for the production of an audiovisual work: Module 2 — Support for the item ‘Completion Guarantee’ in a production budget, and
  • credit financing for the production of a work: Module 3 — Support for the item ‘Financial Costs’ in a production budget.

Applications for this call for proposals must be submitted at the latest by:

  • 6 January 2012, for projects with an earliest start date 1 July 2011,
  • 6 June 2012, for projects with an earliest start date 1 December 2011

The guidelines and application forms of this call for proposals may be found on the European Commission’s website.

 

 

Brand Spanking New Marie Curie Alumni Portal

The Marie Curie Alumni Portal is offering free membership services to anyone who has won Marie Curie funding; and with over 50, 000 researchers who have been funded through this scheme, it is bound to be a hive of activity! The portal currently offers a number of membership services such as: 

  • an automated alert about new Marie Curie calls for proposals or meeting;
  • a discussion board to promote the exchange of knowledge between alumni on areas of expertise, career opportunities or events and conferences;
  • an events calendar with important meetings and events of interest to alumni; and
  • personalised alerts to news and content from the portal.

Following on from the launch of the Alumni portal, in 2012 a Marie Curie Alumni Association will be created which will merge with the existing Marie Curie Fellows Association.

If you have won Marie Curie funding, then please do register on this prital . And if you are thinking of applying in the future for a grant, then this shows what a great support network exists for Marie Curie Fellows, leading to future collaborations.

 

A glimpse of Horizon 2020….

It has been announced that Horizon 2020 will include three components for basic research, industrial technology, and ‘grand challenges’

  • ‘Excellence in the science base’ will fund basic research.
  • ‘Creating industrial leadership and competitive frameworks’ will fund business research and innovation, in particular for small enterprises.
  •  ‘Tackling societal challenges’ will fund research that responds to grand challenges such as food security and climate change.

Horizon 2020 will increase funding for innovation through funding schemes for ‘prototyping, dissemination, demonstration, pilots, testing, user involvement, market replication, and public procurement’ and will use a single, standardised set of rules across all funding instruments to simplify procedures. In addition, it will expand the Open Access Pilot that promotes the free dissemination of EU-funded scientific publications, which now covers about 20 per cent of the Framework 7 budget.

Bamboozled by Intellectual Property Right in FP7 proposals…?

Then the new factsheets published by the European Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Helpdesk is for you!

The factsheets aim to help you with your IP issues at different stages of FP7 projects before you start writing your proposal. How to manage IP in FP7 during the proposal stage looks at some of the issues you need to consider when putting your proposal together, as well as questions you should address in the text of the proposal itself. How to manage IP in FP7 during the negotiation stage highlights issues that consortia should bear in mind during negotiation of grant agreements with the EC once a proposal has been lucky enough to have been selected for funding. ‘How to manage IP in FP7 during and after the project’ isn’t quite ready yet, but will be published on the IPR website soon!

Interested in bio-based economy? Then you need to read this consultation summary!

The EC has published a summary of responses to the recent consultation on the bio-based economy in Europe. The consultation gathered views from stakeholders in advance of the upcoming EC Communication on the Bio-Based Economy (to be published in November) which will be the main EU strategy until 2020 for developing and promoting a sustainable bio-economy in Europe (and therefore influence funding!).

225 responses were received in response to the consultation, which contained 12 questions around potential benefits and risks of fostering a bio-based economy in the future, the current achievements and existing obstacles that hinder the functioning of the bio-based economy today; and future actions that will be necessary.

The responses indicated that the reduction of waste and pollution was the biggest potential benefit of a bio-based economy that could be achieved in the short term (by 2020). Strong consensus was gained on the possible achievements in the short term of the provision of agricultural advisory services and/or knowledge transfer systems to farmers, and on the increase in the use of bio-waste and other waste streams. There was major concern over the possible over-exploitation of natural resources and food security and only 27 % of all respondents thought research and innovation actions on the bio-based economy are effective both at EU and Member State levels. Respondents also claimed that insufficient links between decision-makers and stakeholders from the bio-based economy sectors is hindering the successful functioning of the bio-based economy, along with not enough links between policies, lack of long-term impact analysis in decision-making and insufficient provision of loans and venture capital and that lack of general public information and understanding of the sustainable bio-based economy is a concern.

You can read the full consultation document for yourself on the EC webpages.

All the latest on the FP7 Security theme

The Security theme has been a hive of activity over the last few weeks!

Firstly the EU has signed a European Framework Co-operation with the European Defence Agency which will allow them to formally cooperate in promoting dual-use application in research, formally consult with each other and share their R&D goals, align their agendas and coordinate calls for research topics as well as influencing the development of a possible Security theme in Horizon 2020. These activities are expected to support the emergence of dual-use technologies and capabilities for civil and military users across the 27 EU Member States. Protection against Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) threats is the first research topic that will be addressed under the newly established EFC. Other topics where the Commission and the EDA plan to co-ordinate their work involve unmanned aerial systems and situational awareness, which includes many technological sub-sectors involving sensors, information management and cyber-security.

Secondly, the presentations of the 2011 Infoday are now available online for anyone who couldn’t attend. These slides also include the list of participants, and Project Officers’ contact details; this is the first time that a list of Project Officers responsible for the various topics to be funded under a Security call has been published.

Thirdly, the annual Security conference was held in Poland at the end of September. The focus of the conference was to explore effective ways in which industry, research institutes and local public (end-user) authorities can be brought together and it was ackwledged during the conference that one of the main challenges is to move the programme from its research focus to a market perspective due to the sector’s fragmentation. Several achievements of the FP7 Security theme that were highlighted during the Conference as well as some of the main new policy goals for Security research in Horizon 2020. You can  read more about the conference  on the SRC 2011 website.

New plans for Partnering in Research & Innovation

The EC recently published  Partnering in Research and Innovation which sets out the different types of partnering and aims to progress partnering activities across the EU. The report acknowledges that the existing partnering activities they currently have (such as Public-Private Partnerships) work well as the mutual trust built within them creates excellent research which in turn makes Europe a more attractive global partner in addressing major societal challenges.

More relevant for BU as we tend not to participate in these partnering activities, is that the report acknowledges the need for Horizon 2020 to develop a framework to encourage and support future partnerships and capitalise on these early indications of success. The Active and Healthy Ageing EIP pilot which is designed to ensure that ideas are successfully developed and brought to market in the most coherent way possible is indicative of this.

In order to strike the right balance for Horizon 2020, the EC will soon launch a strategic exercise to determine where and how the partnering approach can be applied most successfully and the types of initiative to which the instruments are best suited. I will keep you informed when further information on this is released.

Media related EU Funding available

Development of Production Projects (including animation, creative documentaries and drama): One of the objectives of the programme is to promote, by providing financial support, the development of production projects intended for European and international markets presented by independent European production companies in the following categories: animation, creative documentary and drama. Deadlines are 25.11.11 and 13.04.12.

Development of Online and Offline Interactive Works: One of the objectives of the programme is to promote, by providing financial support, the development of production projects intended for European and international markets presented by independent European production companies. Deadlines are 25.11.11 and 13.04.12

It’s official – FP7 has competetive success rates

FP7 has unfairly gained a reputation as being extremely difficult to obtain. The latest figures released from the EC show that FP7 actually had a success rate of 21% last year (a massive €3.9 billion of research funding was distributed through 63 calls for proposals). Our recent blogpost on Research Councils show that the EC is actually higher than many of our home funders.

The statistically greater chance of success, coupled with the added benefits of gaining EU funding as testified by BU academics such as Sherry Jeary and Dimitrios Buhalis shows that we should all be looking to the EU for funding. If you are a BU member of staff and have an idea for EU funding you want to discuss, drop me an email.

How does the UK do in FP7?

A report recently released by the EC gives facts and figures on participation in FP7, including participant patterns, proposal evaluation assessments, success rates and review times. There is also a special section on Marie Curie actions and an outline of the top university and industry partners.
Highlights are that under FP7 funding 10, 524 grant agreements have been signed (involving 58, 945 participants), totalling a whopping 18.5 billion Euros.

The UK does well in FP7, representing 13 of the top 50 academic participants, featuring in the top 20 research organisations who participated and 4 of the top 50 industry partners in FP7 are from the UK. In terms of the amount of funding awarded in successful applications, the UK shows we’re not shy in asking for money, ranking second out of the 27 EU Member States.

What makes a good impact section?

Guidance

In writing an FP7 bid the marks allocated for Impact are the same as those for Science & Technological Excellence. So, how do you make sure you score top marks?

Beta Technology (sponsored by DEFRA) are the UKs National Contact Point for three of the FP7 themes and offer a number of good tips. They’ve also provided real-life examples of a good and not so good Impact Section together with the evaluators’ mark and feedback – these are essential reading for any propective FP7 applicant! 

Impact section examples can be found on the I drive at the following address: \\Lytchett\IntraStore\CRKT\Public\Research Blog Docs\Impact Summary

If you would like more information on the impact advice from Beta Technology please contact Shelly Maskell.

Thinking of submitting to FP7 Energy? There is a free support service available!

The deadline for proposals to the FP7-ENERGY-2012-1 Call is 25th October 2011 and the EU Energy Focus team is providing online support sessions, proposal clinic (one to one meetings of 1 hour with a member of the team to discuss your proposal) and proposal review services prior to the this deadline.

Online support session: This will be held on the key aspects of the preparation of a Stage 1 proposal 3- 4pm on Thursday15th September.  The online support session will provide you with a comprehensive and interactive presentation on key aspects of the stage 1 proposal preparation and submission process and an opportunity to ask questions.   If you would like to join this session please email and you will be sent the telephone conference call dial in details and the weblink where you will be able to view the slides. 

Proposal clinic sessions: These are available in London on Thursday 22nd September.  Register your interest in attending a clinic session by emailing a proposal summary.  They will then allocate the sessions and inform you of the time for your meeting.  If you would like to attend a clinic session but are unable to attend on this date in London they will try to accommodate you on alternative dates or at other locations if this can be arranged.   

Proposal review service: This service is available between Monday 3rd October and the proposal deadline.  Email to express your interest in this. All proposals will be treated as confidential.

FP7 Marie Curie submissions on the up – but so is the budget!

The Marie Curie scheme has had a significant increase in submissions over the last year. The Intra-Europe and International Outgoing Fellowship submissions were up 17% on last year and the International Incoming Fellowships had an 11% increase in submissions.
Don’t be put off applying next year however as the increase in application numbers may be offset by the higher budgets in forthcoming calls. The IEF budget is €15m higher than in 2010 and the IOF and IIF budgets €12m higher.      
Evaluation summary reports for the 2011 proposals are expected at the end of November 2011, with final results due in December; I will post these on the blog when they are released.

EU Blog Special: next week dedicated to Horizon 2020 future funding directions

Horizon 2020 will be the next major Framework Programme of funding from the EC when FP7 ends in 2013. Horizon 2020 will be shaped around several major themes and the EC have held Stakeholder consultation meetings over the last few months to discuss these further and help shape the direction of funding. Everyday next week I’ll post the salient points of the meetings and links for further info.

  • Monday will feature ‘Secure, Clean and Efficient Energy’
  • Tuesday will feature ‘Marie Curie Actions’
  • Wednesday will feature ‘Resource Efficiency & Climate Action and Raw Materials’
  • Thursday will feature ‘Inclusive, Innovative & Secure Societies’ (which includes Humanities and Social Sciences)
  • Friday will feature ‘Smart, Green & Integrated Transport’

Just a reminder that all of the FP7 Work Programmes for this year which feature Calls for Proposals have been summarised for you to take a look at and can be found on our EU webpages