Deadline: 23-Sep-21
The European Commission has announced a grant program with aim to provide trans-national access (on-site or remote) and/or virtual access to integrated and customised RI services for curiosity-driven research in wide scientific domains, offered by a wide range of complementary and interdisciplinary top level research infrastructures.
Scope
- Scientific domains are identified on the basis of a Multi-Annual Priority Setting (MAPS) exercise aiming at achieving a balanced coverage of scientific disciplines addressed under the INFRASERV destination as well as complementarities with Horizon 2020 ongoing grants offering access provision. Within identified domains, emerging areas of research can also be served. The MAPS follows the taxonomy used in the ESFRI Roadmap.
- In 2021, the scientific domains called under this topic are:
- Geosphere, including geo-hazards and geo-resources;
- Biosphere: terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystems, including Arctic and forest;
- Particle and nuclear physics.
- Training for using the infrastructures, and activities to improve, customise and harmonise the services the infrastructures provide, so as to facilitate and integrate the access procedures, and to further develop the remote or virtual provision of services may also be supported.
- Proposals should make available to researchers the widest and most comprehensive portfolio of research infrastructures services which are relevant for frontier research in the domain. To this extent, they should involve, as beneficiaries or as third parties, the necessary interdisciplinary set of research infrastructures of European interest that provide such services. The inclusiveness of the proposal will be taken into account in the Excellence score. Proposals including only few of the research infrastructures services relevant to the scope will be scored lower.
- Proposals in the Geosphere domain could consider, for their inclusion in the service portfolio, relevant services and expertise offered by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), and in particular by its European Laboratory for Structural Assessment (ELSA), for testing full-scale large structures under earthquakes and other threats to structural stability. The unique dimensions and testing capabilities of the ELSA Reaction Wall permit bi-directional testing of real size multi-storey buildings and critical elements of even larger structures, such as bridges.
- Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.
- Proposals should include an outreach plan to actively advertise its services to targeted research communities and, if applicable, to relevant industries, including SMEs.
- Proposal are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.
Funding Information
Grant amount is equal to or greater than EUR 500 000 except for:
- public bodies (entities established as a public body under national law, including local, regional or national authorities) or international organisations; and
- cases where the individual requested grant amount is not more than EUR 60 000 (lowvalue grant).
Expected Outcomes
Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:
- wider, simplified, and more efficient access to the best research infrastructures available to researchers to conduct curiosity-driven research, irrespective of location;
- breakthrough and leading-edge research enabled by advanced research infrastructure services made available to a wider user community;
- improved and harmonised RI services and broader use of RI resources across Europe deriving from the exploitation of synergies and complementarities;
- a new generation of researchers trained to optimally exploit all the essential tools for their research;
- cross-disciplinary fertilisations and a wider sharing of information, knowledge and technologies across scientific fields fostered by closer interactions between researchers active in and around research infrastructures;
- better management, including implementing FAIR data principle, of the continuous flow of data collected or produced by research infrastructures.
Eligibility Criteria
- Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from non-associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call topic.
- A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
- To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions;
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States;
- eligible non-EU countries:
- countries associated to Horizon Europe
- low- and middle-income countries.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/2TmeM9W