Offer to find relevant topics in Horizon Europe

The Project Management Department offers assistance to research teams at the Faculty of Science with finding specific Horizon Europe topics for international research and innovation projects that would be relevant for the research focus of a specific team.

Horizon Europe is currently the main instrument of the European Union to support research and innovation. A large part of its budget is allocated to funding research and innovation projects that are carried out by international multidisciplinary consortia:

• The consortia must involve not only researchers but also potential users of the project results and other relevant actors.
• Proposals must be submitted to a specific “topic” announced by the programme that defines a challenge that should be addressed by the project, scope of the project and its expected outcomes.
• Each year, tens to hundreds of topics are open for proposal submission.
• Usually, only a few projects (ca. 1–5) are funded for each topic.
• Once funded, the same topic usually doesn’t open again for proposal submission (however, topics with similar scope can appear).
• See also Horizon Europe – consortial projects on Faculty website.

Participation in such projects may suit research teams:

• that are interested in collaboration with partners in other European countries, partners outside their specific research focus (possibly even outside research itself) and
• whose results may be used by such collaborators with a vision of practical application down the line.
• The research team should have already established at least some international contacts and collaborations.

Horizon Europe, its parts and calls, are structured according to societal or industrial challenges that should be addressed by the projects – not by research fields. Therefore, a research team can find thematically relevant topics in several different parts of the programme.

If you want to use the help of the Project Management Department with identifying potentially relevant topics, please, send by e-mail to Ludmila Součková (ludmila.souckova@natur.cuni.cz) the following information:
► research focus of your team,
► areas in which your research might be useful.

Please, write the information:
► in English (the Horizon Europe documents are in English and we may not be able to translate the field-specific terminology between Czech and English correctly)
► as understandable to a layman as possible
► as concisely as possible (preferably in no more than ca. 150 words)

Alternatively, you can use the following questionnaire instead of an e-mail.

What follows

When we have identified potentially relevant topics, you need to read careful the “Topic description”, to find out whether it is really a topic for you.

If you don’t have experience with participation in projects of Horizon Europe or Horizon 2020 at least as a Work Package Leader, you probably should not try to coordinate such a proposal yourself. Therefore, you would have to try to join a proposal that is being put together by an experienced coordinator.

In this phase, the Project Management Department can offer you the following support (to some extent, and in collaboration with the Czech National Contact Points):

• Help you to formulate your offer of collaboration.
• Recommend partner-search platforms and events; and possibly help you create your collaboration offer on such platform or platforms, or search for already published potentially relevant collaboration offers.
• Look-up existing projects or networks whose members might be preparing a proposal for the topic you are interested in.

However, most successful consortia are put together based on personal connections. Therefore, you would also have to proactively reach out to your personal research network yourself. Be aware that consortia are formed 3–6 months and sometimes even a year before the relevant deadline.

Register in the evaluator database

At the same time, you can (and probably should) register as a potential proposal evaluator in the European Commission’s expert database.

• You can use some keywords and phrases from the topics you are interested in when describing your expertise.
• This way, if you don’t succeed in finding a suitable consortium and participating in a proposal, you might be invited to evaluated the proposals that are submitted to this or a similar topic.
• Thus, you would learn, how the evaluation works and how good (and bad) proposals look like – which can be invaluable experience when you participate in a proposal in the future.
• See also Horizon Europe – become an evaluator on Faculty website.

Contact points for Horizon Europe at the Faculty of Science:
Ludmila Součková, Martina Holíková: pre-award support,
Tomáš Palatý: post-award support.

About Horizon Europe on Faculty website.

News published by Ludmila Součková on 28. 6. 2024.

Not the information you sought? Found a mistake? Please, let us know.