EC Research Funding
The EC Research Funding Focus Group is a growing community of colleagues across ELIXIR interested in the exchange of knowledge critical for their roles in and around EC funded research.
The main objective of the EC Focus Group is to further spread EC funding knowledge to make e.g. future proposal preparation processes a lot smoother than they have been in the past.
That means it is not just about funding rules and the project management/reporting needs once the grant is funded (post award process). It should also include the pre-award process, which means the selection of suitable calls and the steps needed to enable an organised and structured proposal writing process with an on time submitted, competitive proposal in the end.
The idea is to have a flexible/open group of people, ideally one person from every node/country or institution interested or involved in EC grants from the administrative (but not necessarily only!) side (pre or post award, financial, legal, administrative, ...). This group will meet twice a year for a one day meeting. The agenda will be a mix of presentations to actual topics (upcoming calls, funding schemes, change of rules,...), including presentations from external experts like colleagues from the national contact points (NCPs) or the EC, and time for discussions, exchange of knowledge/experiences and networking.
The EXCELERATE WP12 workshop at the All Hands meeting in Berlin 2018 was the kick off meeting for this new initiative. The 2nd meeting was organised on 2 November 2018 in Hinxton/UK and the 3rd meeting took place at the All Hands meeting in Lisbon in June 2019. The 4th meeting was planned at the All Hands meeting 2020 in Amsterdam, but was cancelled when the meeting was moved online. It finally took place in Amsterdam after all at the All Hands in June 2022.
The next meeting will be an online workshop "How to Write a Competitive Proposal for Pillar II (Horizon Europe)", 3 sessions of 45 minutes on the 6th of February 2024 from 11:00 to 14:00 CET. More information under "Events".
Group leader
Friederike Schmidt-Tremmel