Tag Archives: innovation

Erasmus + Deadlines Announced

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ALERT!!! 2016 application deadlines announced

The European Commission has released the 2016 application deadlines for Erasmus+.

All the deadlines and information on the types of activities you can apply for are contained in the 2016 Call for Proposals document and the 2016 Programme Guide both of which you can download from our Key Resources page.

The Call for Proposals is an overview document containing all the deadlines for 2016, while the Programme Guide contains all the detailed information on how to apply for Erasmus+ funding. You will need to read both documents when planning an application. Please note that as of 20 October 2015, there is a discrepancy between the Call for Proposals and the Programme Guide in terms of the deadline for Strategic Partnerships applications for education and training projects. We are seeking clarification from the European Commission on which is the correct date, and will update our website once the date is confirmed.

We would also recommend that you bookmark our funding deadlines page which will be kept up-to-date with any changes in the coming weeks.

Please contact us for further information on how we can support your Erasmus + application. Email us at: researchservices@staffs.ac.uk

 

HEIF 15/16 Innovation Vouchers – Call OPEN

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Research, Business and Employability Services have opened a call for Innovation and Collaboration vouchers, open to all staff. Innovation and Collaboration Vouchers are designed to support innovative projects, collaborations with companies and cross faculty working.

Call Information

  • Application period: 5th – 30th October 2015
  • Total Budget for theme: 10 vouchers at £4k
  • Projects duration: 4 months
  • Not funded: Internal faculty admin costs, Research Projects, Training and Teaching and learning

The application form along with a best practice example is now available for download in the HEIF dropbox below:

HEIF 15-16 Innovation and collaboration voucher documents

* NOTE you do not require a Dropbox account to access the documents, close dialogue box (x in right hand corner) and the documents will be accessible

 

 

Technology-inspired innovation – information and communications technology

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Innovate UK invites registrations for its call on technology-inspired innovation in information and communications technology. This supports technological innovation feasibility studies on information and communication technology, with a special focus on new software-based technologies or approaches that enable innovation in the areas of data exploration, simpler user experiences, increasing confidence in distributed computing systems, and advanced, modern software engineering. Projects should concentrate on early-stage technical opportunities that contain a significant level of technical risk and some level of uncertainty about how the proposed approach will work in practice.

Companies of any size may apply, however projects must be led by a small or micro business either singly or in collaboration with one other SME or research partner. In addition, companies may submit applications for multiple projects, however they are not allowed to participate in more than one project.

The total budget is worth up to £3 million. Each project should range in size between £50,000 and £150,000, although projects outside this range may be considered. Projects should last six to 15 months. SMEs may receive up to 70 per cent funding of their project costs, medium-sized businesses may receive 60 per cent and large businesses may receive 50 per cent.

  • Closing date 02 Sep 15
  • Deadline information Registrations are invited between 18 May and 12 noon, 2 September; full applications due by 12 noon, 9 September 2015.

Further information:

https://interact.innovateuk.org/competition-display-page/-/asset_publisher/RqEt2AKmEBhi/content/technology-inspired-innovation-may-2015-ict

 

Proposal Development Event on co-creation, growth and inclusion

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Proposal Development event on co-creation, growth and inclusion

15th of June (13:00 till 18:00), Brussels

Registration is now open

ERRIN, invites Universities, Regions and Businesses to the proposal development event on co-creation, growth and inclusion, which will focus of the coming funding opportunities in 2016-17. We would like to engage with the likeminded individuals on the following areas of expertise: Economics, ICT, Technology, Health, Social Sciences.

Co-creation puts end-user or customer in the centre of production process and co-creation of value. At this event we will be looking at co-creation in a context of

(i) purpose-driven innovation,

(ii) end-user involvement and

(iii) cross-boundary collaboration.

We are looking to focus on Co Creation

  • In Health Diet, Diabetes, Smoking and Obesity
  • In Culture Virtual Museums and Social Platform on European digital heritage, memory, identity and cultural interaction
  • In Responsible Research and Innovation: specifically gender related
  • In Design: User-driven innovation: value creation through design-enabled innovation
  • In ICT: Please note this is a major Cross cutting theme.
  • In Security: Anti-corruption, fraud and cybercrime
  • In Mobility: mobility of people and money and its consequences for the European social and economic system

What is the aim of Brokerage Event? It is an event that provides the opportunity to meet consortium partners and discuss project proposals ahead of the 2016/2017 calls with the potential to develop consortia.

How to get the best out of the Brokerage Event Prior to the Brokerage Event, we invite all participants to make their project ideas and/or expertise known via the ERRIN Site. Participants will have the opportunity to present their idea in a facilitated round table session in a short project pitch to promote their proposal.

Who should attend? Regions, companies and universities with the following areas of expertise:

Economics, ICT, Technology, Health, Social Sciences who are interested in developing project proposals and partners in for the 2016-17 topics as well as some 2015 ones. This is the right place to bring together well targeted ideas and clearly defined cooperation needs from the research and business sector.

For more information and participation please contact:

Tatiana Panteli, European Business and Research Development Manager, t.panteli@wlv.ac.uk

 

Healthcare technologies challenge awards

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The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council invites outline proposals for its healthcare technologies challenge awards. These will enable early-career researchers to develop new research groups and capabilities that address long-term health challenges and will have the potential to become new centres of critical mass in multidisciplinary health technologies research.

Proposals must align with one of the following grand challenges:

  • developing future therapies
  • frontiers of physical intervention
  • optimising treatment
  • transforming community health and care.

In addition, proposals should further the following crosscutting research capabilities:

  • advanced materials
  • disruptive technologies for sensing and analysis
  • future manufacturing technologies
  • medical device design and innovation
  • novel computational and mathematical sciences
  • novel imaging technologies

Principal investigators should be academics working in and holding a permanent academic post for up to eight years at an HEI, a research council institute or an independent research organisation. Applications may include a limited number of co-investigators from a complimentary discipline, provided that their participation is crucial to the interdisciplinary nature of the work.

The total budget of £10 million will fund approximately 10 awards. Funding should enable the PI to devote 35 per cent of his/her time to the project. Other eligible costs include staff time, consumables and equipment, user engagement, impact and dissemination activities, and partner collaborations and exchanges.

For further information go to: https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/healthcaretechchallengeawards/

Closing date: 14 May 15

EU Prize for Women Innovators 2016 Launched

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The European Commission, has recently launched the third edition of its contest for women innovators. Suitable female applicants can submit their proposals through the Participant Portal by 20 October 2015.

After the success of the forerunners of the competition in 2011 and 2014, the Commission intends to continue its drive to spotlight women researchers who have brought outstanding innovations to the market.

The prizes will boost the public awareness of the contributions that female researchers bring to the field of entrepreneurship and will encourage entrepreneurial women to become innovators.

Although women are more and more active in research, there are still too few women creating innovative enterprises.The Commission plans to award up to three “EU Prizes for Women Innovators” following a European-wide contest.

Three prizes will be awarded in Spring 2016:

  • 1st prize: €100 000
  • 2nd prize: €50 000
  • 3rd prize: €30 000

The prizes are addressed to women who have founded or co-founded a company and who themselves or through their company have benefitted from EU funding related to Research and Innovation.

The prizes will not reward research or innovation proposed for the future, but only successes that have been already achieved by the candidate

Please, find more information in the link below.

http://www.ukro.ac.uk/subscriber/Pages/150311_wiprize.aspx

 

£10 million HEFCE fund to support collaborative research on policing and crime reduction

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On 28 January 2015, HEFCE announced a new £10 million Police knowledge Fund, administered via its Catalyst Fund and supported jointly with the Home Office.

Established in partnership with the College of Policing, the fund will encourage police forces to collaborate with experts from academic fields such as criminology, economics, neuroscience and computer analytics in order to better understand crimes, to develop innovative ways of policing and more responses to crime.

The call has not been released yet, however more information are expected in due course on the HEFCE website: please click here.

Horizon 2020: Fast Track to Innovation Pilot

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The Fast Track to Innovation pilot supports projects from the demonstration stage through to market uptake.

A wide range of activities will be supported including piloting, test-beds, systems validation in real world/working conditions, validation of business models, advanced R&D, standard-setting and advanced performance testing.

The scheme targets relatively mature new technologies. Concepts, processes and business models that need a last development step to reach the market and achieve wider deployment are the focus.

The total budget for FTI in 2015 is EUR 100 million, which will be divided equally among the three cut-off dates in April, September and December. The EC plans to fund 50-70 projects each year and it is expected that the scheme is going to be extremely competitive.

FTI is open to all types of participants, including universities, RTOs, SMEs, large companies, incubators, first time applicants, etc.

Consortia must be comprised of three to five beneficiaries from different Member States or Associated Countries, with significant industry participation.

No typical commercial activities (including marketing activities) will be supported due to EU competition rules but funding can be used to improve an existing marketing strategy to help maximise impact (i.e. developing the marketing strategy to include more countries, etc).

All proposals must include a business plan that clearly describes the market potential and business opportunities for participants, in addition to measures to enhance the probability of potential commercial take-up as well as a credible commercialisation strategy.

Maximum project duration will be 36 months with a maximum EU contribution of EUR 3 million. The Commission expects that the average project duration will be 12-24 months.

Deadlines:
29/04/2015, 01/09/2015, 01/12/2015

For further information go to: http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/fast-track-innovation-pilot-2015-2016

H2020 call to come: Innovative schemes for open innovation and science 2.0

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A Horizon 2020 call, for supporting Universities to become Open Innovation Centres for their region, will be launched on 10/12/2014 with a total budget of €13,670,000.

The term Open Innovation “assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology.” Henry Chesbrough, Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, 2006.

Implementing a model of open innovation is naturally associated with a number of risk and challenges, including the possibility of revealing intellectual property. However, numbers of successful initiatives exist and Universities can act as a trusted intermediary to bring multiple parties together and to allow them to collaborate in a hosted and trusted way.

The actions under this topic will help universities, companies and public authorities to enhance their capacity to engage in science 2.0 and open innovation. They will build or reinforce structures and mechanisms to support effective linkages for innovation between universities and companies and other employment sectors, and provide freely accessible innovation training platforms, including digital platforms.

http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/2475-inso-4-2015.html

If you are interested in getting involved with European funded projects and to know more about Horizon 2020, please contact us on externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk to register to: Be a Part of European Funding – Thursday 20 November – LT114/116 Ashley Building, Leek Road, Stoke-on-Trent.

11.8 billion Euros for 2014-2020: the European Commission has formally adopted the UK partnership agreement on the 29th October.

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The European Commission (EC) has adopted Partnership Agreements with six Member States on the 29th October, including the United Kingdom. The UK Partnership agreement allocates €11.8 billion of European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) for key thematic investments during the period 2014-2020. The UK government is now waiting for a formal response from the European Commission to its Operational Programmes.

The European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) covers the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund (ESF), the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF), and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD). The funds are concentrated on a limited number of priorities for a better impact on growth and jobs in the UK: research and innovation, ICT, competitiveness of enterprises and low carbon economy represent more than 80% of the total allocations.

Both the European Commission and the United Kingdom are expecting to increase the number of innovative enterprises, including the number of collaborations between SMEs and academic institutions in the UK. Superfast broadband, low carbon economy, sustainable land management, inactivity levels, higher level training and skills are also within the main targets of the UK Partnership Agreement.

Within the ESI Funds Growth Programme, England is being allocated €3.6 billion of European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), €3.3 billion of European Social Fund (ESF), and €3.4 billion for Rural Development.

The ERDF and ESF Operational Programmes, which are breaking down the investment priorities and objectives of the Partnership Agreements into concrete actions, are due to be adopted by the European Commission in the next few months. Applications will then be able to be submitted to the relevant Managing Authorities of the programmes for applying to these funds.

To find out more:http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/newsroom/detail.cfm?id=1796&LAN=EN&lang=en