Horizon Europe newsletter - September 2022

Autumn update

Autumn is a very busy time for the Horizon Europe National Support Network with a full season of call deadlines and activities with SMEs, research scientists in third level and our many other Horizon Europe stakeholders.

In October, the entire Horizon Europe National Support Network plan to meet face to face for the first time in almost three years for our annual gathering of National Contact Points (NCPs), National Delegates and key stakeholders. Part of the meeting will include sessions with research office representatives from across the third level system as well as key Government Departments. This will be a welcome opportunity for existing team members to meet each other face to face again and also a timely occasion for new NCPs to meet everyone in the team.

In that vein, I would like to extend a big welcome to three new NCPs who are now part of our National Support Network: Enterprise Ireland’s Padraig Doolan, who takes over from Conor Sheehan as the new NCP for Cluster 4 – Space, while Louise Campion from Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland is a new NCP for Cluster 5 - Energy, taking over from Ann Marie Colbert. The new NCP position for the New European Bauhaus has been assigned to Nicola Matthews, a Senior Architect at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The entire team looks forward to working closely with them and I want to thank Conor and Ann Marie for their contributions to the team during H2020 and up to now.

Congratulations are also due to Kay Duggan-Walls, one of our Health NCPs, who has recently taken up a new full-time position as a Seconded National Expert working in the Combatting Diseases Unit at the Horizon Europe Cancer Mission. We look forward to working with Kay in her new, important role over the next few years.

In July, the Commission adopted the New European Innovation Agenda – which has a strong focus on how deeptech innovation can be supported and harnessed nationally and regionally by Europe to make our economies more sustainable and digital and to guarantee Europe’s future food, energy and raw materials security. Horizon Europe will play a key role in enabling the aims and objectives of the New European Innovation Agenda and this will become more apparent in 2023 and beyond.

EU Missions are a new, significant feature of the Horizon Europe programme; they represent a more challenge-based approach to bringing concrete technology, policy, governance, and public-private solutions together to address five prioritised global challenges in Cancer, Soil Restoration, Climate Adaptation, Oceans & Waterways Restoration and Climate-Neutral Smart Cities. Missions combine research and innovation activities with new forms of “whole of government” and “whole of society” collaboration at scale involving EU Member States, regional and local authorities, research institutes, farmers, citizens, entrepreneurs and investors to create real and lasting impact. In Ireland and other Member States we are continuing to work hard on establishing the most effective national coordination structure for Missions so that Ireland can maximise the opportunity presented by this part of the Horizon Europe programme.

Related to Missions, I would like to offer my congratulations to the following who have each been appointed as experts to the Phase II Horizon Europe Mission Boards from 2022 to 2025: Amanda Drury who has been appointed to the Cancer Mission Board; Shane Ward who has been appointed to the Climate Adaptation Mission Board, Peter Heffernan who has been appointed to the Ocean and Waterways Mission and John Gilliland who has been appointed to the Soil Mission Board. Only 15 experts from across Europe were appointed to each of these Mission Boards, so their appointments are an international acknowledgement of their expertise and experience.

We have updates from three of our Horizon Europe National Contact Points in this month’s newsletter: Bob Flynn, NCP for Cluster 5 - Mobility, Chiara Loda NCP for European Research Council Social Sciences and Humanities (ERC SSH) and Cluster 2 - Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society and Gerard Kennedy, NCP for Cluster 4 - Digital and National Representative for the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU).

A record 277 applications from 39 countries were submitted for the recent Women Innovators EU Prize 2022 call. In 2021, seven out of the 21 shortlisted applicants came from Ireland, and we are hoping to feature prominently on the list again this year when the finalists are announced in November.

New stories on two Horizon 2020-funded projects have also been published in September - you can read about the 40-strong PRECINCT project tackling security issues for critical infrastructure which secured €9.5m with five Irish partners sharing €1.6m. You can also learn more about NUI Galway Professor Mary Murphy’s experience of coordinating AutoCRAT which has received €7.4m in Horizon 2020 funding.

Ireland now stands officially at €183.3M on the Horizon Europe dashboard - more than 300 signed grants to date - and we are aware of many other project funding awards to participants from Ireland that have been secured over the last three months but are not yet captured on the dashboard. So, Ireland is off to a very solid start to the Horizon Europe programme and we look forward to helping many more Irish companies and research scientists participate. More important than the amounts awarded is the real-world impact from these funding awards – for example, company innovation and competitiveness, research talent attraction and retention, intellectual property creation and commercialisation, scale-up funding, international networks, policy development, industry value chain resilience, downstream employment, new products and services that tackle global issues, etc.

A full, up-to-date listing of all our National Support Network team members is available in one document here – please get in touch and let us know how we can help.

Kevin Burke

National Director for Horizon Europe

Enterprise Ireland

Dr Bob Flynn, National Delegate and National Contact Point for Cluster 5 - Mobility

Horizon Europe Cluster 5 (Climate, Energy and Mobility) aims to fund transformative research and innovation to support the objective of achieving climate neutrality in Europe by 2050. The transport sector is responsible for 23% of the European carbon dioxide emissions, so intensified research and innovation activities are needed, across all transport modes, for the EU to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions while also maintaining a safe and smart mobility system.

These aims will be addressed through two main Destinations in the upcoming 2023-2024 Work Programme:

Destination 5 - addresses activities that improve the climate and environmental footprint, as well as competitiveness, of different transport modes
Destination 6 - addresses safety, resilient transport and smart mobility services for passengers and goods.

Other activities to support the electrification of the mobility sector through novel battery chemistry and battery pack development will be addressed under Destination 2.

The next Work Programme for Cluster 5 (2023-2024) will be officially published by the European Commission on the 28th November on the EU Funding and Tenders portal with the first set of call closing dates expected to be in Q2 2023 (TBC). Information days and a brokerage event to support these calls will be held in Brussels on the 15th and 16th December 2022.

A novel aspect of the Mobility related calls topics under Cluster 5 are the European partnerships, which aim to intensify and accelerate research collaboration in focused technology areas such as:

For those companies or 3rd level institutions with a strategic interest in these areas, the partnerships provide a forum for call topic development for inclusion in the work programme as well as consortia building and proposal development. These partnerships are open to new members and application for membership can be made online, through the appropriate partnership website.

Further Horizon Europe mobility funding opportunities can be found under the modal specific Joint Undertakings (JU’s). These public-private partnerships cover four transport sectors, namely Clean Aviation, the Digital European Sky (SESAR), Hydrogen and Europe's Rail. The Joint Undertakings have recently successfully completed their first round of calls with a further set of calls expected to be published in 2023. These will be made available on the Funding and Tenders portal in due course.

Finally, the Transport Research Arena (TRA) will be held in Lisbon in November 2022. This is Europe’s premier mobility research and innovation showcase, and Ireland aims to have a large presence at the event. Registration for this event is still open at TRA Conference - Transport Research Arena | TRA Conference.

Dr Chiara Loda, National Contact Point European Research Council, Social Sciences and Humanities (ERC SSH) and National Contact Point Cluster 2 - Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society

Cluster 2 of Horizon Europe concerns “Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society”. The main focus of this Cluster is challenges related to democratic governance, cultural heritage and the creative economy, as well as social and economic transformations.

While mostly appealing to Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) researchers, Cluster 2 offers tangible opportunities for interdisciplinary cooperation.

Cluster 2 and Irish performances
The second round of Horizon Europe Cluster Calls for proposals closed in April. Over the summer, applicants have been informed of the result. I was delighted to learn that 24 Irish participants were successful in their bid and approved for a joint drawdown of more than €6m.

Seizing opportunities for SSH research
As an NCP, I am committed to engaging with the SSH community, within and beyond academia. In this regard, my goal is to keep working with experienced stakeholders while reaching out to new ones, expanding the pool of interested applicants.

For instance, in partnership with Enterprise Ireland, I co-organised the event “SSH and Interdisciplinarity in Horizon Europe” (May 2022, full report available here)

Stay in touch
We run a twitter account @HorizonIE_AHSS mostly focused on sharing resources relevant to the SSH research community, such as EU funding opportunities and guidelines. Together with other initiatives, we also use this account to promote the inclusion of SSH researchers in other Clusters (inclusive those traditionally perceived as STEM-heavy), fostering meaningful interdisciplinary cooperation.

Dr Gerard Kennedy, National Contact Point for Cluster 4 - Digital, and National Representative for the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU)

I am a Horizon Europe Cluster 4 - Digital National Contact Point (NCP) and Expert, and the National Representative for the Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking (SNS JU) which is also part of Horizon Europe Cluster 4 - Digital.

The SNS JU aims to ensure industrial leadership for the EU in 5G/6G. It also fosters alignment with Member States for ambitious 6G Research and Innovation (R&I), and deployment of advanced 5G networks, with an EU budget of €900m for 2021-2027. It comprises four R&I streams as follows:

A: Evolution of 5G systems towards 6G networks.
B: Revolutionary technology advancements for 6G.
C: Experimental infrastructure(s).
D: Large-scale SNS trials and pilots with verticals.

This JU has continuous phases of R&I activities with for example, phase 1 from 2021-2022, phase 2 from 2023-2024, etc. The Irish results for the phase 1 call were good, with funding for two SMEs, four large industry and three academic/research centres. The first phase 2 call is expected to open in January 2023 and close in April 2023 - it will focus primarily on Streams B, C and D (as above).

I look forward to continuing to provide you with assistance and advice on Horizon Europe Cluster 4 - Digital and the SNS JU.

PRECINCT is harnessing AI, automation and cross-sectoral expertise to develop a common security management approach across multiple EU member states.

The project aims to protect the complex web of critical infrastructures across the EU, especially around vulnerabilities arising from interdependencies and cascading effects.

From airports, ports and railways to hospitals, waterworks, energy pipelines and power plants – critical infrastructure is crucial to modern life. No matter what, we need these facilities and systems to stay up and running, which means they must be prepared and resilient if they come under attack or fall victim to natural hazards.

“Cyber-attacks and physical attacks are real – they do happen,” explains Jenny Rainbird, Head of EU Project Delivery at Inlecom Commercial Pathways. The firm is project managing PRECINCT, a €9.5m project funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme, which aims to strengthen critical infrastructure resilience in the region.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a painful degenerative disease of the joints - although it is one of the most significant causes of disability worldwide, it has no known cure.

A team at the Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI) at NUI Galway, along with European partners, is now seeking to change that.

Having worked with stem cells over recent decades, Mary Murphy, Professor of Regenerative Medicine at REMEDI, is acutely aware of the potential of stem cell-based therapies to repair cartilage, help prevent OA and treat it in patients who already have the condition. Currently, she is coordinating and co-leading AutoCRAT, a four-year project funded to the tune of €7.4m under the EU Horizon 2020 programme.

CARDEA - Career Acknowledgement for Research Managers Delivering for the European Area

More than one fifth of the world's top researchers (22.2%) reside in Europe. While ‘Research Manager’ is a relatively young career profile, the importance of the role is likely to increase in the next couple of decades as we tackle more complex problems than ever.

Research Managers (RMs) play a key role in administering research activities and valorising a range of hidden research outputs, but there is a fundamental lack of understanding of European RM profiles, including role characteristics, demographics and career pathways.

Named after the Roman Goddess of the Hinge, as Research Managers open Research Doors, the UCC coordinated project CARDEA (Career Acknowledgement for Research (Managers) Delivering for the European Area) aims to tackle this and has been funded under the Horizon Europe call Towards a Europe-wide training and networking scheme for Research Managers.

Find out more about CARDEA here.

Events in October 2022:

Tue 4 Oct, Horizon Europe Coordinators’ Day on Grant Management. Access the webinar here
Thu 6 - Fri 7 Oct, EU Bioeconomy Conference. Discover more here
Tue 11 Oct, Implementing the network of European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs) in EU regions. More here
Tue 11 Oct, Horizon Europe financial guidelines - live webinar with EMDESK. Register here
Thu 20 Oct, Lump Sum Funding in Horizon Europe: How does it work? Access the webinar here
Thu 20 Oct, Patent Protection for EU funding beneficiaries series - Digital communication. Details here
Thu 27 Oct, European for Tech Climate Action Conference - free to attend. More information here