EU Horizon 2020 Funding Calls Open
Today marks the launch of the new Horizon 2020 funding programme, which will encompass the next 7 years of EU research funding. In preparation, the Sustainability Science group held a meeting to help prepare researchers for the forthcoming calls.
There have been draft documents circulating among the academic community for the past few months, in preparation for the opening of the next generation of European research funding. The chairs of the Sustainability Science have been working on these drafts for the past few weeks, in order to help prepare members for the calls. Last week we had a very productive meeting, during which Sue Edwards from the University EU Office gave us a helpful insight into the new funding model, and group members were able to network and discuss the various call topics.
It is likely that the broad range of specialist expertise in the Sustainability Science group will mean that there is interest in a number of different areas. A large portion of the overall budget is reserved for calls relating to seven societal challenges . Of these challenges, the following are most likely to be of interest to SSS members:
- Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research, and the Bioeconomy
- Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials
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Secure societies - protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens
There is also a call for proposals in the field of Global Systems Science that forms part of the FET Proactive subsection of the Future Emerging Technologies programme. In addition, at last week's meeting, some members expressed an interest in the Earth Observation topics that fall under the Space section.
The first calls close in April 2014, so now is the time to be forming consortia, and getting ideas together. There are also calls that close later in the year, and in 2015. Details of these have all been released.
The release of these calls coincides with a new research portal website. This website is searchable, although only on first examination it seems that only the terms that make up the call titles/descriptions are of use. So if you are unfamiliar with the calls, a good place to start is the societal challenge areas.
The good news for SSS is that there are plenty of topic areas that align with research interests within the group.
As always, the RIS team are happy to offer advice and guidance, so do get in touch.