N°3, 23rd March 2009
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Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7)
Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP)
Tenders Electronic Daily (TED)
Please register and book your hotel room now via the conference website. The block booking of hotel rooms expires on March 30th.
The 2009 EARTO Annual Conference will take place in Paris on Tuesday, May 5th and Wednesday, May 6th - preceded on the afternoon of Monday, May 4th by a meeting of the EARTO Working Group.
The conference is kindly hosted this year by a consortium of our French members: the Association des instituts CARNOT (AiCarnot), the Association des Structures de Recherche Contractuelle (ASRC), the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) , and the Réseau des Centres Techniques Industriels (CTI).
The dedicated conference website provides information about the programme, facilities for conference registration, and information and booking facilities for hotel accommodation.
As always, EARTO members and invited guests attend the conference free of charge.
The location for the conference is Les Salons de l'Aveyron in the recently re-developed Bercy area of eastern Paris.
The first day of the conference programme will feature an address by European Regional Policy Commissioner Danuta Hübner on the scope for using EU Structural Funds for R&D and Innovation. This will also be the subject of one of three parallel sessions during the afternoon of the first day. Other sessions will focus on Working Effectively for SMEs and Building Strategic Alliances between RTOs.
The second day’s plenary session will address the changing structure of the EU Framework Programme, its consequences for RTOs, and proposals for its future development elaborated by an EARTO Task FOrce. This part of the conference programme will include high-level participants from the European Commission and from the Swedish EU Presidency which begins in July.
Visit the website and register now!
On the afternoon preceding the EARTO annual conference - May 4th, starting at 14:00 - there will be the traditional EARTO "Working Group" meeting.
The Working Group is a forum open to all interested EARTO members for discussing current European R&D developments, project ideas - indeed anything of likely common interest.
Topics so far placed on the agenda of the Working Group meeting in Paris include:
There will also be an opportunity for recent new members of EARTO to briefly present themselves.
Members wishing to propose other topics for the Working Group agenda are invited to contact Kadija Taffah as soon as possible.
The first competition for the annual EARTO Innovation Prize is now open.
The prize is open only to EARTO members. A jury selected to provide a balanced representation from the worlds of research, industry, public service and innovation will select the winning innovations: in the first instance, up to three innovations may be rewarded each year.
Each prize will reward a recent innovation achieved with a significant contribution from an EARTO member.
Rewarded innovations will have the following characteristics:
• social and/or economic relevance;
• inventive originality;
• proven or at least plausibly demonstrated practical application, and
• proven or at least plausibly demonstrated viability.
The prize - in the form of a certificate and a trophy - will be awarded to the RTO per se, in recognition of a collective effort by the winning organisation. Awards will be made in the autumn of each year at a dedicated, high-level ceremony in Brussels.
The EARTO Innovation Prize will be awarded for the first time in 2009.
Full details about the prize are available here.
The time-table is as follows:
April 10th: Closing date for applications
May 4th: Completion of stage-one screening
June 15th: Completion of final evaluation and selection
October: Award ceremony in Brussels
If you are currently experiencing an ex-post audit of your FP6 projects by the European Commission, or have been informed that you will be audited shortly, you may wish to contact the EARTO Secretariat for advice.
EARTO continues to monitor with the greatest attention the issue of ex-post FP6 audits, which threaten serious financial harm to many RTOs (see previous issues of EARTO News).
The most recent development is that last week the European Parliament's Budget Control Committee voted on the discharge of the Commission budget for 2007, and MEP Ingeborg Grässle tabled three amendments requesting the European Commission:
Although these amendments were tabled only a few days before the vote, EARTO Board members and other EARTO members were able to contact a large number of MEPs, with the result that all three amendments were accepted unanimously by the voting members of the Budget Control Committee. This means that all of the Parliament's political parties recommended support for the amendments.
This is an excellent result, which surely was substantially due to our collective, coordinated lobbying. It is an excellent example of what EARTO members can achieve by working together and it should put significant political pressure on the Commission to think again about what it is doing.
To be clear: this was a vote in the Budget Control Committee. The full Parliament will vote on the budget discharge in April, but it would be unusual for the full Parliament not to follow the Committee's recommendations. In any case, we shall be carefully monitoring events and we shall alert you if there is a need to intervene again.
For further information, please contact Christopher John Hull
The Special Interest Group on Spin-offs provides a forum for managers from RTOs with a structured spin-off policy. They meet about once a year, to compare notes, inform each other about new developments in their respective spin-off programmes, and generally to exchange experience and information.
The group will next meet in Paris, in the run up to the EARTO conference, on 4th May from 10:00 to 13:00.
For more information: Christopher John Hull
In July of last year, EARTO launched an experiment with technical Special Interest Groups. The idea is to group together members with complementary technological expertise in specific fields of application, in order to develop joint projects and to bid for contracts.
The first group has been launched on the initiative of Neven Zarkovic from EARTO member Rudjer Boskovic Institute (RBI) in Croatia, and a first successful workshop, on Novel Bioactive Substances for Industrial and Biomedical Use, was held in Zagreb on November 25th and 26th.
It is now proposed to launch a second Special Interest Group devoted to Biosensors.
Interested members are invited to contact:
Neven Zarkovic M.D., Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
Laboratory for Oxidative Stress
Rudjer Boskovic Institute
Bijenicka 54,
10000 Croatia
Phone: ++385 1 457 1234 / 456 0937
Fax: ++385 1 456 1010
E-mail: zarkovic@irb.hr
EARTO gives space in this newsletter to members who would like to publish their job vacancies. Please contact Nina Baumeister.
November 8 - 9, 2010
ESWIRP first workshop, Cologne, Germany
October 27, 2010
EARTO Innovation Prize - ceremony
October 11 - 15, 2010
2nd European Innovation Summit
September 23, 2010
DESCA Consultation Group Meeting
September 22, 2010
DESCA Core Meeting
September 16, 2010
EARTO Communication Task Force, Brussels
September 15, 2010
EARTO Innovation Prize Jury Meeting, Brussels
Preparations for the launch of the first Knowledge and Innovations Communities (KICs) within the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) are proceeding rapidly.
An updated presentation about the EIT including selection criteria for the KIC is available here.
A number of new official documents are available here
The EIT plans to launch two or three KICs in January 2010. They will be selected through an open Call for Proposals. The selected KICs will address one or more of the following themes:
• Future ICT
• Sustainable energy
• Climate change adaptation and mitigation
On the 6th and 7th of May the EIT will hold a workshop in Wroclaw, Poland. The workshop will concentrate on entrepreneurship and it will be followed by an info day on KICs on the 8th of May. More information will come available here.
The Call for Proposals for the first KICs will be launched in early April, with a closing date in August. This is expected to be a highly competitive exercise, and there are good reasons to think that the winning consortia will be based substantially on already existing initiatives.
Further information: Mikael Kekkonen.
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The EARTO meeting room is available to members for meetings of 12 (14 absolute maximum), including light refreshments (coffee, tea, etc.) and the use of a projector, at €250 per day. Lunch arrangements are extra.
Members needing a larger meeting room are welcome to contact the Secretariat for assistance.
For further information, please contact Sylvia Lopomo at the EARTO Secretariat: +32-2-5028698.
To subscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter, please send an e-mail to baumeister@earto.eu.