EU FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT TIPS

The European Commission has launched a call for tender for a study to assess the progress of the eHealth Action Plan in every objective. This will steer the preparation and design of the post-2015 programming period.

The evaluation of the eHealth Action Plan 2012-2020 will contribute to the eHealth strategy of DG CONNECT and could support the same exercise by 2020.

The current study should include the assessment of the progress of the e-HAP in every objective by:
1. analysing the added value of having an action plan;
2. providing an overview of the implementation of the e-HAP in the first 2-3 years, including a quantitative and
qualitative description of the priorities set, the financial mechanisms used (e.g. operating grants, joint actions,
tenders, etc.), the beneficiaries reached, the actions funded, and the intended results;
3. assessing the relevance, effectiveness and efficiency of the funded actions, taking into consideration the
fact that the majority of the actions funded will not have provided all the deliverables and final reports when the
evaluation takes place, so the assessment of impact will have to be forward-looking. However, some preliminary
outcome should be analysed, above all related to the data strategy;
4. assessing the impact and adoption of the policy targets.
This assessment should include desk work on the projects and studies supported by the EC, in addition to a
survey with representatives of MSs or other key stakeholders about the progress, impact and added value of
the actions which have taken place. The study should look for quantitative and objective indicators. Satisfaction
surveys should be complementary.

Maximum value 200 000 EUR.

Time limit for receipt of tenders or requests to participate
19.9.2014 - 16:00

Specific Challenge: A key structural change overtaking computing is the move towards a low-power computing continuum spanning embedded systems, mobile devices, desktops, data centres, etc. The demand for low-power multi/many-core computing systems is intensifying across all market segments.

Capitalising on Europe's industrial and technology strengths in low power computing and embedded and cyber-physical systems, the objective is to strengthen European competitiveness in the key parts of the emerging computing value chain. With the wider diffusion of embedded ICT and cyber-physical systems, security becomes increasingly important to be addressed across all levels starting from secure and trusted zones supported on hardware and software level.

Expected impact:

·         Reinforce and broaden Europe's strong position in low-power computing in traditional and new market segments by strengthening the technology competences of European suppliers and the academic community.

·         Reduction of energy consumption of servers by 2 orders of magnitude as compared to state of the art in 2013.

·         Double the productivity in efficiently programming and maintaining advanced computing systems powering cyber-physical systems as compared to state of the art in programming embedded systems in 2013.

·         Increase the adoption of form-factor data-centres and heterogeneous highly parallel computing systems.

·         Higher involvement of SMEs, both on the supply and the demand-side.

·         Increased adoption of concurrency in applications across all sectors; higher degree of parallelism in applications; increased public trust in embedded applications due to secure and reliable architectures.

Deadline Date 14-04-2015 17:00:00 (Brussels local time)

Types of action:

a.       Research & Innovation Actions – A mix of proposals requesting Small and Large contributions is expected

b.      Innovation Actions – A mix of proposals requesting Small and Large contributions is expected

c.       Coordination and Support Actions

European Training Networks (ETN)

ETNs are multi-partner research training networks and must be composed of at least three beneficiaries established in at least three different EU Member States or Associated Countries. Above this minimum, the participation of other organisations, including international organisations and those from Other Third Countries, is possible under the conditions provided by the Horizon 2020 Rules for Participation. Although there is no pre-defined size for these multi-partner networks, it is strongly recommended to keep the size of the consortium between 6 and 10 beneficiaries. It is expected that beneficiaries will be drawn from the academic and non-academic sectors and that ETN proposals will offer intersectoral and interdisciplinary research training as well as high-quality supervision arrangements. Each beneficiary must recruit and host at least one ESR.

The sole topic of this Call, INFRASUPP-2-2015 "Innovative procurement pilot action in the field of scientific instrumentation", used to be part of the Call H2020-INFRASUPP-2015-1. After the update to the Horizon 2020 Work Programme of 23 July 2014, it has been moved into this new Call. The deadline has been moved to 21 April 2015. The topic is otherwise unchanged.

Topic: Innovative procurement pilot action in the field of scientific instrumentation

Scope: The activity will support pilot actions in the field of scientific instrumentation exploiting the innovation potential of research infrastructures using Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) and/or Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI) schemes. The following types of proposals can be submitted under this topic:

a.      Feasibility studies

Proposals will focus on analysing and exploring the use of PCP or PPI procurement for common purchasing operations of a set of research infrastructures. Activities can include analysis of the state of the art and of the market offer.

b.      Pre-commercial procurement in the field of scientific instrumentation (PCP)

Proposals will define requirements and terms of reference for common procurement of scientific instrumentation and organise joint PCP action encouraging research, development and validation of breakthrough solutions that can bring radical scientific and efficiency improvements in research infrastructures services.

c.       Public procurement of innovative scientific instrumentation (PPI)

Proposals will focus on organizing joint procurement of innovative instrumentation by research infrastructures to enhance their services, better serving their communities.

The Commission expects to fund at least two proposals under this topic.

Food-Scanner Prize

Prize money: €1 million

Timeline: Contest opens at the beginning of 2015 and runs until end of 2015

The objective is to unlock the eHealth market with solutions that support citizens in adopting a more active lifestyle and in improving their health by better monitoring food intake. The expected results are an eHealth solution that enables citizens to assess their food intake and provide optimal recommendations to improve their health and well-being. The solution should benefit a wide range of the EU population, from healthy citizens to citizens suffering from food disorders, obesity or allergies.

Specific challenge: Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the largest cause of death in the EU and account for 40% of deaths or 2 million deaths per year. Overall CVD is estimated to cost the EU economy almost EUR 110 billion a year, and they are also one of the leading causes of long term sickness and loss to the labour market. CVD is therefore a major health problem in every country in Europe.

Scope: Proposals should coordinate national and regional programmes for research in the area cardiovascular research by implementing a transnational call with EU co-funding resulting in grants to third parties. Moreover, proposals should also aim at the better collaboration and alignment of national programmes and activities and should provide concrete plans for decreasing fragmentation, for data sharing, for addressing hurdles for effective coordination, for involving stakeholders and relevant existing initiatives. The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of a minimum of EUR 5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected impact:

·         Stepping up funding of transnational collaborative research projects in the area of cardiovascular research;

·         Identification of common research priorities and research needs, also taking into account developments on the international level where relevant;

·         Establishment and/or implementation of a common strategic research agenda;

·         Development and alignment of national and regional plans;

·         Streamlined national or regional practices in organising research funding;

·         Increased interoperability of national research programmes;

·         Prioritisation of transnational research;

·         Sharing of data and knowledge;

·         Networking of infrastructures and databases;

·         Contribution to the establishment of the ERA by addressing issues related for example to administrative hurdles, IPR management and different practices regarding resource sharing.

Scope and objectives

Type of action: ECSEL Research and innovation action

Description: Action primarily consisting of activities aiming to establish new knowledge and/or to explore the feasibility of a new or improved technology, product, process, service or solution. For this
purpose they may include basic and applied research, technology development and integration, testing  and validation on a small-scale prototype in a laboratory or simulated environment.

Reimbursement rate for establishing the EU contribution

Industry  50% 
SME  50% 
University/Other 50%

Deadline Date

Total Call Budget

European Cooperation Projects - Small and Large:

 2nd Call: Wednesday 1 October 2014

European Platforms: 

2nd call: Wednesday 25 February 2015 (for two-year ‘framework partnership agreements’)

3rd call: Wednesday 5 October 2016 (for four-year ”framework partnership agreements’)

European Networks

2nd call: Wednesday 5 October 2016 (for four-year ”framework partnership agreements’)

Literary Translation Projects

2nd call: 1 February 2017

Good luck!

 The annual Copernicus Masters competition is awarding prizes to innovative solutions for business and society based on Earth observation data. 

This competition rewards innovative proposals for new applications of EO data in solving problems for society and businesses. So don't miss the chance to win prizes with a combined value of more than EUR 300,000.

These are 3 of the 9 challenges 

BEST SERVICE CHALLENGE

The Best Service Challenge invites service providers to submit profiles of their existing services to the Copernicus Masters. For the Best Service Challenge all submissions are welcome which address any of the GEO (Group on Earth Observations) Societal Benefits Areas: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Climate, Disasters, Ecosystems, Energy, Health, Water, and Weather.
The Best Service Challenge aims at increasing the awareness of existing Earth monitoring services and their benefits to citizens.

IDEAS CHALLENGE

The Ideas Challenge gives students, entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs a creative platform to initiate and design the most innovative and cutting-edge ideas using Earth observation data. For this Challenge all submissions are welcome which address any of the relevant application fields, including: Agriculture Management, Automotive, Emergency Management, Environmental Protection, Marine Monitoring, Mobile Applications, Renewable Energies, Tourism/Leisure.
The evaluators will focus on creativity and market needs rather than on the technological perfection and business case of the ideas submitted.

The European Space Agency (ESA) will award the best application idea that uses Earth observation data on mobile devices. Proposals shall address one or more of the main thematic areas of the European Earth observation programme Copernicus (land monitoring, marine monitoring, atmosphere monitoring, climate change, emergency management). ESA is looking for ideas that can be implemented quickly into a profitable business. There are plenty of possible ways to enrich apps with data from space.

Deadline 15.07.2014 

Objective:

The COFUND scheme aims at stimulating regional, national or international programmes to foster excellence in researchers' training, mobility and career development, spreading the best practices of Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions.

This will be achieved by co-funding new or existing regional, national, and international programmes to open up to, and provide for, international, intersectoral and interdisciplinary research training, as well as transnational and cross-sectoral mobility of researchers at all stages of their career.

Scope:

Each proposal funded under the COFUND scheme shall have a sole participant that will be responsible for the availability of the necessary matching funds to execute the proposal.

Participants submit multi-annual proposals for new or existing doctoral programmes or fellowship programmes that may be run at regional, national or international level. The evaluation is organised in two different panels: A) Doctoral programmes and B) Fellowship programmes. Support cannot be awarded to researchers who are already permanently employed at the host organisation.

Deadline Date 01-10-2015 17:00:00 (Brussels local time)

Topic: Cloud Computing, including security aspects

Specific Challenge: Data are motivating a profound transformation in the culture and conduct of scientific research in every field of science and engineering. Advancements in this area are required in terms of cloud-centric applications for big data, as well as in creating novel cloud technologies that provide effective utilization and optimization of heterogeneous resources (such as storage and communications) in big data scenarios, in particular addressing privacy, security and other Quality-of-Service issues.

Scope:

·         The focus of the joint research will be the development of innovative technologies combining advanced Clouds and Big Data approaches to address the challenges stemming from different application domains in business and societal contexts. The technologies developed should take into account interoperability  and data portability issues and aim towards future standardization.

·         Coordinated and Support Actions

One CSA for the research coordination and policy activities, including research roadmapping and supporting further future common activities, i.e. dissemination, organisation of workshops, preparation of future coordinated call topics, etc.

Planned Opening date 15-10-2014

Deadline Date21-04-2015 17:00:00 (Brussels local time)

Total Call Budget€7,000,000

European Industrial Doctorates (EID)

EIDs have the objective of training highly-skilled researchers and stimulating entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation in Europe. This is to be achieved in particular by involving the non-academic sector in doctoral training so that skills better match public and private sector needs. Each EID is composed of at least two beneficiaries established in two different Member States or Associated Countries. At least one beneficiary must be entitled to award doctoral degrees (*) and at least one beneficiary must come from the non-academic sector, primarily enterprise. Each participating researcher must be enrolled in a doctoral programme and spend at least 50% of their time in the non-academic sector. The joint supervision of fellows by supervisors from each sector is mandatory. A wider set of partner organisations may also complement the training.

Note that EID proposals will be ranked in a separate panel with a dedicated budget of €25 million.

The contests for the five innovation prizes will start in late 2014 and early 2015.

The prizes, worth €6 million in 2015, cover three different thematic areas of research:

health:

• "Reduction of the Use of Antibiotics Prize",
• "Food-Scanner Prize"

environment:

• "Reduction of Air Pollution Prize"

 ICT :

• "Collaborative Sharing of Spectrum"
• "Optical Transmission Prize".

Type of action: ECSEL Innovation Action

Description: Action primarily consisting of activities directly aiming at producing plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved products, processes or services. For this purpose
they may include prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication.
A 'demonstration or pilot' aims to validate the technical and economic viability of a new or improved technology, product, process, service or solution in an operational (or near to operational) environment,
whether industrial or otherwise, involving where appropriate a larger scale prototype or demonstrator.
A 'market replication' aims to support the firstapplication/deployment in the market of an innovation that has already been demonstrated but not yet applied/deployed in the market due to market
failures/barriers to uptake. 'Market replication' does not cover multiple applications in the market of an innovation 4 that has already been applied successfully once in the market. 'First' means new at least to Europe or new at least to the application sector in question. Often such projects involve a validation of technical and economic performance at system level in real life operating conditions provided by the market.

The aim of the ESA App Developer Lab, the "App Camp", is to create awareness for the possibilities offered by the European Earth Observation Programme Copernicus - Global Monitoring for Environment and Security. The App Camp shall therefore facilitate mobile app development by providing developers with access to an API and insight into ESA's Earth observation activities.

The goal of the App Camp is to produce mobile apps using Earth observation data on smartphones, ready to be brought to market.

ESA will provide access to satellite data for the development of mobile applications (Android and iOS) in five predefined categories. A dedicated API will enable easy integration of Earth observation data into your app. To take part in the App Camp, you don't need any experience in integrating such data.

Participants will be able to choose their preferred category and apply either alone or in teams of two, three, or four. All selected candidates will be grouped into teams of four.

The following categories are available:

• Agriculture
• Emergency and Rescue Management
• Environmental Protection
• Maritime Environment and Maritime Transportation
• Lifestyle and Tourism

Participation in the App Camp is open to any app developer of adult age with citizenship in the following countries: ESA member-states, states involved in the Copernicus Space Component (CSC), and countries participating in the Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Community, which are all listed hereafter: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, the Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Canada.
Candidates who are permanently employed confirm with their application that their employers approve of their participation for the whole duration of the App Camp.

Registration will be open from 23 May to 21 July 2014.