10 July 2015

On the morning of 1 July, EIF and Knowledge4Innovation (K4I) jointly hosted a Breakfast Debate on ‘Innovation, R&D and EU funds’. This debate was an occasion to provide a better understanding of how the European Union can help innovative projects via EU funds and to share concrete examples.

Lambert van Nistelrooij, MEP, EIF Steering Committee Member and Chair of the K4I, was hosting this debate. In his opening remarks he reviewed available EU funds to be used to fund various ICT innovation projects with an aim to create new jobs in Europe.

Gerard de Graaf, Director for Digital Economy & Coordination at DG CONNECT, European Commission, presented 2 EC programmes helping to boost innovation in the EU. 

'The Innovation Radar' – is a DG Connect support initiative which focuses on the identification of high potential innovations and the key innovators behind them in FP7, CIP and H2020 projects. The Radar supports the innovators by suggesting a range of targeted actions that can assist them in fulfilling their potential in the market place.  

Pre-Commercial Procurement is designed to steer the development of solutions towards concrete public sector needs. Under Horizon 2020, the EU increases support for groups of public procurers who work together on joint Pre-Commercial Procurements. The Public Procurement of Innovative solutions can stimulate innovation by bringing innovative commercial end-solutions earlier to the market.

Roland Strauss, Managing Director of K4I, presented 2 tools which aim to help EU citizens to find all the necessary information about the EU funding in an easy and not complicated way. 

EU Funding Trends is news and events portal covering all EU managed funding programmes such as Horizon 2020, COSME and EUREKA. It also follows the developments of the EFSI, the EIB and the European structural and investment funds. 

YourEUprofile is an online application which identifies the EU funding programmes, calls for proposals and related pieces of legislation relevant to EU citizens, universities and SMEs.

Presentation slides are available here (pdf download)

Gábor Szabó, Dean of the University of Szeged, Hungary, presented the case of ELI Science Park project in Szeged. ELI Science Park aims to be one of the largest research facilities of the EU. The project is financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the Hungarian government. 

Presentation slides are available here (pdf download)

Dr Monica Dietl, Director of COST, presented organisation’s activities. COST is the longest-running European framework supporting trans-national cooperation among researchers, engineers and scholars across Europe.

Pierre Guisset, Senior consultant at ERCIM, presented the PaaSage project. PaaSage is an open source integrated platform to support both design and deployment of Cloud applications, together with an accompanying methodology that allows model-based development, configuration, optimisation, and deployment of existing and new applications independently of the existing underlying Cloud infrastructures. The project receives research funding from the European Union's 7th Framework Programme.

 

  • #INNOVATION
  • #ICT

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