Finding Partners for Projects

This short guide will give you ideas how you can find partners to work with on a project.

If you are just starting out on project work, it can be a good idea to find partners who are already writing project bids and team up with them.

If you have an idea and need more people to join it, use this guide to find them.

Finding partners for your research project

Become a partner on a Horizon 2020 bid

wpid-ants-working-togetherIf you have not been involved in a Horizon 2020 project before, one of the best ways to get involved is to find organisations submitting bids and ask to join them as partners. UKRO has made a factsheet giving ideas of how to find partners for horizon 2020 projects.

It includes suggestions such as joining European Technology Platforms or linking in with the European Enterprise Network. UKRO Factsheet on Consortium Building, to see this document you need to use your UKRO username and password, or set up an UKRO account if you don’t already have one.

Joining a Horizon 2020 research project could provide you with a direct path to generate a 3 or 4 star rated REF output.

Networking to Join Horizon 2020 Projects

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