Projects

Project CZERA 3 (Inter Eexcellence) follows previous activities of Research Infrastructure CZERA 2 (2015-2017) and provides it´s continuity, expanding and innovative activities. CZERA 3 represents an expert system which provides a wide range of professional consulting and support services to submitters and participants of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, and analytical-information services to decision makers responsible for R&D policy, particularly in the field of international scientific cooperation, so as to achieve a broader and more effective Czech integration into European research area (ERA).

The project is structured into eight sub-areas of activities which correspond to the EC requirements for the operation of the national contact points (NCPs) system. As well a campaign, which will apprise the research community with the 9th Framework Program will be a part of the project CZERA 3.

The main goal of the VATES project is to make use of science-policy research to contribute to improving the quality of strategic decision-making in research, which is key to an efficient management of research policies on national, regional, and institutional levels. An efficiently and strategically managed research policy that utilizes modern methods of strategic studies is a prerequisite of improving the competitiveness of Czech research.

An important aspect of a quality research policy is the ability to access information about current trends in the area of technology development, research directions, and potential impacts of new technologies on socio-economic developments, environment, living standards, behavioural patterns, and population health. Such information is important for strategic decision-making of the public administration, research organizations, and enterprises.
The public administration uses this information to formulate and implement research policies, research organizations use it to direct their research projects, develop international cooperation, and create new study courses, and enterprises use it to orient their research, development, and innovation activities and develop international cooperation within global production networks. However, the growing availability of various types of structured and especially unstructured data makes the systematic and conceptual gathering of such data more demanding, and the same is true for the subsequent processing, analysing, and interpreting of this data.

The research realized as a part of the VATES project will thus concentrate on the development of methods for systematic monitoring and assessment of technological and socio-economic trends, methods for assessing potential impacts of new technologies on society, and methods for evaluating the results and impacts of science policies.

TC coordinates BISONet PLUS project (BusInesS and InnOvation Support Network) that provides services of the Enterprise Europe Network in the Czech Republic. The Enterprise Europe Network is the largest network of contact points providing information and advice to EU companies on EU matters, in particular small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The network offers concrete and effective solutions to entrepreneurs and companies in more than 50 countries worldwide. The network covers nearly 600 local partner organisations, employing around 4 000 experienced staff working to support competitiveness of EU businesses.

The CZELO facilitates a direct contact between Czech research and important European institutions, mainly the EC, the European Parliament, and the EU Council. For this purpose the office is located in Brussels. The CZELO also cooperates with Czech regional offices in Brussels. The office, which is financially supported by a grant (LTI17010) from the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, provides services to all parties interested in European research cooperation, especially in the Framework Programmes.

Currently the CZELO4 project has been runníing, which follows previous CZELO1, CZELO2 and CZELO3. More details about the period you will find here.

The aim of BioHorizon is to facilitate transnational co-operation within a network of National Contact Points (NCPs) for Horizon 2020, within the scope of Societal Challenge 2 (SC2) “Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy” and the Key Enabling Technology (KET) “Biotechnology” with a view to identify and share good practices in order to improve general standard of support to programme applicants.
TC is a worpackage leader for Communication and dissemination.

COSMOS 2020, the EU funded network of National Contact Points (NCPs) for Space Research and Aeronautics  aims to strengthen NCP mutual cooperation. In 2007 under FP7 the EU started funding an NCP Space network which was named COSMOS. This enabled the NCPs to benefit from each other’s experience and thus raise the level of the overall quality of their services. Additional services were established like a joint website and news service providing information about Space and EU Framework Programme related topics. Within COSMOS2020 the network activities are continued under Horizon 2020.

The main objectives of the 2nd Coordination and Support Action (CSA) of the Joint Programming Initiative Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life (JPI HDHL) are to support the further implementation of JPI HDHL and to create a sustainable collaboration of Member States, the European Commission and related international organisations. Support facilitated by the 2nd CSA is to ensure sufficient progress on alignment and also on the ethos of joint programming in the area of nutrition and health becoming embedded within Member States’ research and innovation policies and programmes. The 2nd CSA will focus specifically on these issues and will take into account foresight and evaluation activities as important aspects for the future of research in the scientific and policy areas covered within the JPI HDHL.
Objectives of the 2nd CSA:

- Alignment of national research programs on health and nutrition 
- Mature collaboration between the MS and focus on a sustainable support structure for the JPI.
- Increase collaboration with important stakeholders. Industry, science and policy will be invited to take ownership of areas of the JPI which are under their responsibility.
- Communication activities of the JPI will increase to make the JPI an even more important player in the area of Nutrition & Health.
- Show the impact of joint programming on Nutrition & Health within the MS. The evaluation of the JPI will go beyond pure process indicators and will focus on effect and impact evaluation.
- The collaboration within the JPI will move beyond Europe. In the first phase Canada and New Zealand have become partners, but the next five years will be used to broaden the scope of the JPI to new interested countries with a specific focus on Asia and the America’s.

The Technology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences (TC) won a national tender for providing
a technology transfer activities for the European Space Agency (ESA) in the Czech Republic.
TC has been doing this service since October 2015. The Czech Republic is therefore involved in a significant network of ESA Technology Transfer Network. The network operates an online database of technologies, methodologies, proven practices and new materials, which is a unique marketplace, where it is possible to match technology needs with available space solutions and thus enhance new applications in a commercial non-space area.
The main objective of the project is to increase the frequency of transfers of knowledge and technology from ESA space program to industry, as well as from companies or universities working in space program to other industrial areas outside the space sector. The technology transfer may also lead up from the Czech entity to the ESA.

GoNano has as its main objective to improve the responsiveness of research & innovation processes to public values and concerns. The project builds on previous projects in public engagement and new technologies to develop a pilot project in each of the nanotechnology research areas Health, Energy and Food.

The pilot projects will run in three countries (The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Spain) and will engage citizens with researchers, professional users, civil society organisations, industry, and policy makers in a continuous process of deliberative workshops and online consultations to co-create concrete suggestions for future nanotechnologies. GoNano will build a broad community of ‘change agents’ for integrating an ‘RRI way’ of working on research and innovation, and it will develop and disseminate an RRI business case to align public values, needs and concerns with industry for profit ambition.

The main outcomes of the three pilots is to develop nine concrete product suggestions for future nanotechnologies in the above mentioned research areas, which are aligned with societal needs,values and concerns. The main outcome of the project is to provide concrete policy recommendations for Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in the nanotechnologies responsive to societal needs and concerns.

The main aim is to foster responsible research and innovation approaches in the nanotechnologies by engaging citizens and stakeholders in a highly particpatory process and methods.

The objective of the project is to create and apply a functional horizon scanning system aimed at monitoring and evaluating technological and social trends and their potential impacts.
Partial objectives of the project are:

• To create a system for collecting and processing structured and unstructured data and sorting and analysing them by using appropriate software tools.
• To create an IT platform for methodologically led expert discussion on identified technological trends, their potential impacts on society and individual segments of the Czech economy (e.g. domains of smart specialization) and on readiness to capture and absorb these technological trends.
• To verify the functionality of the system in the entrepreneurial discovery process while managing the National RIS3.

The main objective of Idealist2018 is reinforcing the network of National Contact Points (NCP) for LEIT ICT under Horizon2020, by promoting further trans-national cooperation within this network. This cooperation will also include collaboration and networking with similar networks in parallel themes (Security, ENV, Transport, Energy, Health,…etc) especially in the context of joint/coordinated or PPP calls.

Special focus is put on helping less experienced NCPs from Member States (MS) and Associated Countries (AC) to access the know-how accumulated in other countries and to apply it in a locally relevant and efficient manner.

Furthermore Idealist2018 aims to address national and cross-border audiences, relying on the NCP network mainly established in the MS and AC at national and regional level, to stimulate, encourage and facilitate the participation of current and future ICT research stakeholders in ERA. Special focus is put on newcomers and SMEs, including organisations from MS, AC and third Countries.

The activities of Idealist2014 are incremental to the formal NCP responsibilities as they address the international aspects not covered by the nationally funded NCP role. It is built upon:

• Experience gained over more than 15 years from the 8 preceding projects covering FP4 to FP7 and now the transition to H2020
• Strengthening NCP cooperation with support for MS, AC and third Countries
• Provision of Training and Twinning for less experienced NCPs
• Provision of partner search, pre- and full proposal quality support
• Focused support for SMEs in the ICT sector and for organisations new to H2020
• Provision of NCP support for countries with S&T international agreements
• Promotion of opportunities and Idealist services ensuring a higher NCP visibility

NCP ACADEMY is a joint project of several European organizations coordinating the activities of National contact points (NCP) for Horizon 2020 Programme at the national levels. Project team consists of NCP coordinators as well as Legal and Financial NCPs. The project aims at enhancing the knowledge of all officially nominated NCP in cross-cutting issues of H2020, exchanging the experience and sharing best practises between experienced NCP and also providing the feedback to the EC.

The objective of the NCP_WIDE.NET is to create a transnational network of National Contact Points (NCPs) for Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation under the EU programme Horizon 2020 in order to facilitate trans-national co-operation between NCPs and to identify and share good practices. Raising general standards of support to applicants, organization of internal and external workshops, trainings and brokerage events will be realized in the framework of this project as well.

The overall objective of NCPs CaRE is to form a joint cooperation network of experienced and less experienced National Contact Points (NCPs) on SC5 “Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials” which aims at pooling their resources and know-how to raise the overall quality of services provided to their clients. By involving 23 formally nominated NCPsacross Europe, the project will significantly strengthen transnational cooperation.

NUCL-EU 2020 is set up in order to provide EURATOM NCPs with all the required skills in such a way that they can ensure the best support for Horizon 2020 potential applicants and raise the average quality of proposals submitted under the new EURATOM Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (R&I).

NUCL-EU 2020 is a 48 months project having the following specific objectives:

1. Enhancing the competence of NCPs, raising the level of know-how of the EURATOM network in particular helping less experienced NCPs rapidly acquire the experiences accumulated in other countries.
2. Consolidating the network of EURATOM NCPs.

The mission of the project is to provide all EURATOM NCPs with the necessary tools, guidelines and training to carry out their duty efficiently and, most importantly, to be part of a dynamic network which will allow the exchange of experiences and good practices, learning from each other and reporting back to the European Commission (EC) on identified management issues susceptible of improvement.

The main aim of the project Reduction of Food Waste in Public Catering (RedPot) is to provide qualified background documents for the implementation of measures focused on reduction of food in catering.

Partial aims are:
1. To quantify the food waste in catering (selected canteen and fast food chains) and estimate the amount of waste in the whole segment in the Czech Republic.
2. To identify the the causes of wood waste on the side of operators as well as consumers (customers) in selected establishments; and to derive from them general factors leading to food waste in canteens and fast foods.
3. To propose measures supporting reduction of food waste in the segment of catering for practical use in firms, NGOs / CSOs as well as public administration.

The project RICH (Research Infrastructures Consortium for Horizon 2020) is built on activities of previous project EuroRIs-Net +. The project aims at more effective collaboration of national contact points (NCPs) for research infrastructures in order to improve their services to applicants in Horizon 2020. 11 project partners and 30 associated partners will benefit from the project activities. Project activities will lead to better and more professional service of national contact points across Europe and facilitate access to information on the H2020 Calls.

SEREN4 is the continuation and evolution of the precedent network, SEREN3, whose results and lessons learnt have been taken into consideration with the logic of improving the future network and in order to capitalize on the network’s strengths. In addition, new tasks and activities will be implemented to meet the challenges of the security area and requirements of new SC7 topics. The network will seek further opening to a wider target of stakeholders and businesses in the Secure Societies field.

SEREN4 consortium comprises 19 Beneficiaries, with a good mix of well-experienced and less experienced NCPs, and representing Member States, Associated Countries and Third Countries. Besides Beneficiaries, the project services will be offered to all officially appointed H2020 Secure Societies NCPs, who will be involved in project activities as “Associated Partners”.

SiS.net is the network of NCPs specialised in supporting the Science with and for Society programme of Horizon 2020. SiS.net provides high quality services to Science with and for Society stakeholders, authorities, research institutions and enterprises on the opportunities offered by Horizon 2020 to boost integration of scientific achievements into society and engage the public in science.
The main objectives are to increase dialogue and collaboration between Science with and for Society stakeholders, for example: CSO's, cities, research funding agencies, science centers,  science museums, media organisations and education establishments and for the second to enhance the visibility of the Science with and for Society programme.