News items 2008
Ministries of France, Spain and Germany signed MoU to reinforce the strategy of public-private partnerships
The 1st ERA ARD Call, on “Bioenergy” is
has officially been launched 1st of September 2008.
Eligible Research Consortia are invited to submit research proposals and can
apply for funds, up to the limits set aside by the respective national funding
organisation.
For the 1st ERA ARD Coordinated Call national grant funding will be available through national funding organisations providing national contributions (usually referred to as a virtual common pot) in line with national funding regulations. This implies that each country funds its own component of the transnational project. The possibility of funding Southern partners may be used by the national funding organisations according to their national funding regulations. This may involve the research institution entering into a partnership with a Southern partner or sub-contracting the Southern partner if this is possible within national regulations.
Each research consortium must be transnational and consist of a minimum of 3 independent legal entities in partnerships from 3 different countries of which at least 2 are from the ERA ARD partner countries and 1 from a country on the “DAC List of ODA Recipients”. The research consortium must be lead by an institution in an ERA ARD Consortium member country. Consortia including entities from Hungary, Lithuania, Slovenia and Poland are encouraged.
The deadline for electronic submission is 31st October 12.00.
ERA-ARD website 1st Call
EC 2009 work programmes for theme 2 and 6
The European Commission has today published the 2009 work
programmes and calls for theme 2 (Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, Biotechnology)
and theme 6 (Environment, including climate change). http://cordis.europa.eu/en/home.html
A new component in this year’s work programme is a multidisciplinary
call on Biorefineries with a
budget of 57 million Euro. This call requires researchers to form multidisciplinary
consortia beyond existing networks. For
this reason four European Technology Platforms – SusChem, Plants for
the Future, Forest-based sector and Biofuels – active in the four themes
covered by the call, are holding a joint brokerage and partnering event on
Monday 15 September 2008 (10.00-13.00).
http://www.epsoweb.org/Catalog/TP/SRA_Implement.htm
Successful Multidisciplinarity in academy research programme on GMOs
The Academy of Finland’s Research Programme on Environmental, Societal and Health Effects of Genetically Modified Organisms (ESGEMO) has contributed to strengthening the pool of Finnish researchers and experts in the field and to increasing Finnish scientific knowledge and know-how of GMOs and their effects. This is the view expressed by an international panel in its evaluation report on the ESGEMO programme. According to the panel’s assessment, the programme achieved many of the scientific goals set for it, though the quality of scientific outputs greatly varied among the projects. The panel feels that the multi- and interdisciplinary programme has increased opportunities for Finnish researchers to investigate the societal and environmental effects of genetically modified organisms.
ESGEMO was carried out in 2004–2007. The ten research projects included in the programme were funded with a total of 3.6 million euros by the Academy of Finland, the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and the Finnish Ministry of the Environment. The report Research Programme on Environmental, Societal and Health Effects of Genetically Modified Organisms 2004–2007 (ESGEMO). Evaluation Report is available at www.aka.fi/eng > Academy publications > Publication series.
http://www.aka.fi/en-gb/A/Academy-of-Finland/Academy-publications/Publication-series/
http://www.aka.fi/Tiedostot/Tiedostot/Julkaisut/3_08_ESGEMOverkko.pdf
ELIXIR: Securing the future of Europe's biological data resources
In a contract signed May 28th, the European Commission has awarded 4.5 million Euro to a pan-European consortium to decide upon the best way to unite Europe's biological data resources into a sustainable, integrative bioinformatics network for the life sciences.
The European Life-science Infrastructure for Biological Information (ELIXIR) project is led by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and involves 32 partners from 13 countries. The consortium ultimately aims to establish a sustainably funded infrastructure for biological information in Europe, to support innovation in life science research, knowledge generation and its translation to medicine, the environment, the bio-industries and society.
ELIXIR aims to protect the existing and future data held in biological data resources. The project will work to provide a European infrastructure for optimal information storage, access and integration supported by a secure funding mechanism. "Under the Framework Programme for Research, the European Commission provides support to the preparatory phase for the construction of new research infrastructures," commented Mr Robert-Jan Smits, Director of Directorate B (European Research Area: Research Programmes and Capacity) at DG Research of the European Commission. "This will help catalyse the efforts and resources needed to build and ensure the sustainability of large-scale, word-class infrastructures needed by Europe's research communities." In this way, the longevity of Europe's central molecular data resources will be guaranteed.
The development of such a network is a strategic step in maintaining the global position of Europe as a leader in scientific research.
The complete news item and more information on ELIXIR can be found at www.elixir-europe.org
Call launched within trilateral activity between France, Germany, and Spain based on the research programme "Transnational Plant Alliance for Novel Technologies - toward implementing the Knowledge Based Bio-Economy (PLANT-KBBE) in Europe
On 4th of September 2007 France, Germany and Spain signed a Memorandum of Understanding to reinforce the strategy of public-private partnerships. The parties in the joint initiative are the “Ministère de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche” (MESR, France), the “Agence Nationale de la Recherche” (ANR, France), the “Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung” (BMBF, Germany) and the “Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia” (MEC, Spain).
This initiative follows upon a trilateral call in 2003, and a second joint call developped under the frame of ERA-PG and launched in 2006 together with a few other countries as Sub Call B of the ERA-PG programme.
The present initiative is coined PLANT-KBBE: Transnational Plant Alliance for Novel Technologies - toward implementing the Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy in Europe. Goal is to launch a new research program combining the national activities in plant genomics, plant systems biology as well as biotechnology and to support the establishment of a knowledge-based bio-economy in Europe (KBBE). The “Transnational Plant Alliance for Novel Technologies - toward implementing the Knowledge Based Bio-Economy’ (PLANT-KBBE) in Europe" will start in early 2008 and will run until 2013.
More: http://www.mec.es/ciencia/jsp/plantilla.jsp?area=eranets&id=14; (at the PLANT-KBBE
secretariat of MEC) ; < http://www.fz-juelich.de/ptj/plant > (at PtJ; Projektträger Jülich);
Contact: Dr. Dominique Laborde at Génoplante, France; Dr. Rainer Büschges at PtJ, Germany: ; Dr. Julio Barbas at MEC, Spain