Category Archives: News

UK National Agency for Erasmus+

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Erasmus+, the new European programme for education, training, youth and sport will have a national agency to manage certain aspects of the funding. The previous Lifelong Learning Programme was run by both Ecorys and the British Council. They have teamed up together to bid for the new Erasmus+ contract and been successful.

In the Lifelong Learning Programme, there were a range of smaller funds which were applied to via the National Agency rather than to the European Commission. This will be the same in Erasmus+ only now the two agencies will be providing the support together.

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills estimates that the new Erasmus+ programme will be worth Euros 940 million to the UK between 2014 and 2020. It is expected to increase opportunities for international study, teaching and volunteering across Europe.

This is subject to final contractual agreements and approval by the European Commission. But it is expected they will start operating on 1 January 2014.

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Over €400 billion agreed by the European Parliament

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The European Parliament had a busy week last week approving over €400 billion support measures for regional development, research and innovation, lifelong learning, cultural and media European collaboration activities.  The legislative packages for the following programmes have now been agreed by the European Parliament for the 2014 – 2020 programme period:

Horizon 2020 – €70.2 billion for research and innovation (Draft Horizon 2020 work programmes are now available via the European Commission website at http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm?pg=h2020-documents. )

Cohesion Policy – €325 billion for growth and job creation through European Regional Development Fund; the European Social Fund; the Cohesion Fund; the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development; and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund. 

Erasmus+ – €14.7 billion for lifelong learning, focussing on student and staff mobility through strategic partnerships.

Creative Europe – €1.4 billion for supporting European culture, media and arts sectors

For more information contact externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk for draft work programmes and help in matching funding to your project ideas.  Find out more about Horizon 2020 and Erasmus + in particular at our annual UKRO event on 11th December – the day the first calls of Horizon 2020 will be launched.

INTERREG IVB North West Europe Event

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photo.JB3Staffordshire University staff attended a partnership event in Roubaix, France on the 14th November 2013. The day long event was led by INTERREG IVB North West Europe (NWE) funded by ERDF, the aim was to discuss the new programme and facilitate patnership opportunities around three key themes, Innovation, Low Carbon and Renewable Materials.

Sacha Oberweis represented ARBOR a University led project on BioMass. Representing the Office of Sustainability, John Adlen was championing the setting up of “Urban Labs” and Jose Beech from ECD took part in discussions on Innovation.

To find out more please contact the team at externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk or you can click HERE to access the information from the day.

 

 

Your views on the ‘Knowledge Transfer Chronicle’

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ECD’s Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Team would greatly value your feedback about the ‘Knowledge Transfer Chronicle’ – our quarterly newsletter devoted to KTP and KEEN programmes and projects.

Essentially, we want to know if people are reading it, who is reading it, which of its features are useful, and whether the periodic newsletter format is the best way to communicate with enterprise-minded staff.

So please take five minutes to complete the following, bracingly brief survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZS3M8BT

HEIF call news

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Enterprise and Commercial Development will shortly be opening a call for Innovation and Collaboration Vouchers. The guidelines and application form for this call are now available for download from Drop Box at the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/o7enem2ouzowbem/-Um17cAot7.  

Applications can be submitted from the 4th Nov – 6th Dec 2013. Further details can be found by viewing the guidelines and a best practice example of a completed HEIF application form is also available at the above link.  Please send all completed application forms to Alex Harvey, HEIF Project Manager, via email to a.harvey@staffs.ac.uk.  

Future calls: A call for Continuous Improvement Projects is planned for January 2014.

HEIF

Funding opportunities for ICT research

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The ICT Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) and the ICT National Contact Point are organising a half day event at Aston University to promote forthcoming opportunities for funding from the Horizon 2020 programme. Horizon 2020 is the new European Commission funding programme for research, technological development and innovation. 

This event will provide an overview of the funding available and importantly the range of support in place to help people benefit from these opportunities. ICT is a fundamental part of Horizon 2020 in both addressing new ICT developments and developing the use of ICT to support societal challenges.  Access to finance schemes are also available to support innovation in SMEs.

The event is being held on 20th November at 12:30.  Registration is available at https://horizon2020birmingham.eventbrite.co.uk/.  If you are unable to attend, please contact externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk for feedback. The event flyer can be viewed by clicking here H2020 ICT event flyer November 2013

Staffordshire University ARBOR project in the running for European Commission Award

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Logo regiostars2012

A huge congratulations to the ARBOR project team in our Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Sciences who have been named as finalists in the European Commission’s RegioStars Awards for 2014.  They have been shortlisted from 80 projects from across the EU which have been supported by EU cohesion policy funding on the basis of their delivery of innovation, impact, sustainability and partnership.

ARBOR is an Interreg IVB NWE funded project aiming to develop regional strategies and new technological solutions for more sustainable biomass use.  It is led by Staffordshire University and involves 12 other partners from 6 different European regions.

ARBOR Project Manager Dr Sacha Oberweis traveled to Brussels to showcase the ARBOR project last week to the awards jury (pictured below). The final decision will be made by the Commissioner for Regional Policy, Johannes Hahn in March at an award ceremony on 31st March 2014.

Further information available at http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/cooperate/regions_for_economic_change/regiostars_en.cfm.

Open Days 2013

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Networking to Join Horizon 2020 Projects

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With the new European research programme Horizon 2020 due to open in January now is the time to start networking and seeking out projects which you could become partners on. This is never an easy thing when time and budgets prevent you from getting to conferences in Europe. An alternative way to get a foot in the door can be through using groups on Linked In www.linkedin.com
There is a group called ” HORIZON 2020 ” : Framework Program for Research and Innovation which is a very good starting place. This group is a general discussion place for the H2020 programme, but also has subgroups linking to the H2020 themes. For example, environment, health, Marie Curie or ICT. The group is one of the largest and most active groups on LinkedIn and has surpassed 74,000+ members within just over 2 years and it is ranked within the top 200 out of 1.7 million LinkedIn groups.
The aim of this group is to become an international forum, where professionals working in all types of organizations from around the world could share ideas, knowledge & experiences, and explore new partnership and business opportunities.
Joining the groups can help you to find people who are working in similar areas to you and give you a chance to share ideas and possibly link up to work on a research project together.
Further details: Join group http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=3731775&trk=anet_ug_hm

 

EPSRC consultation open

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EPRSC

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) launched an independent review of the EPSRC peer review process earlier this year. As part of this process, there is a community survey open to all to put forward their views until 30th September. 

  • The peer review process is designed to investigate:
  • Influence of peer review on decision-making
  • How peer review advice is sought and used to inform funding
  • Transparency, cost effectiveness and extent of community ownership

The survey can be accessed at http://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/epsrc/irpr_survey.

Further information on the review and the panel leading the review is available at http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2013/Pages/independentreviewofpeerreview.aspx

UKCGE events

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The UK Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship has published its events calendar for the 2013/14 academic year.Topics cover a variety of areas and include The Challenges of Working with International Postgraduate Students, Impact in Research, Research Ethics, and Using new technologies in delivering Research Skills and Professional Development Training.  Some are free to attend and the type of event varies from workshops, conferences to study trips.

Further information at http://www.ukcge.ac.uk/main/events. 

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