The first issue of this year's Echo magazine presents two articles in English. They are extensive analytical articles regarding activity of coordinators from EU member countries in SC7 – Secure societies in H2020 and at the quality of RIA and IA proposals submitted by coordinators from member countries and Nano-Bio-Medical Research in the Czech Republic and EU Framework Programs namely with contributions of D. Frank and P. Pracna. Another articles in English is an interview with the director of the European ESS Infrastructure, which touches Brexit.
The contributions in Czech are an article about the EU transition to the circular economy, and the text about results of the TWINNING and ERA Chairs 2017 calls.

(To make the English part of the magazine at least a bit visually different from the Czech one, it will be printed on colored paper from this number on.)

• Zdeněk Kučera, Tomáš Vondrák, Ondřej Pecha: Research and development in the field of Artificial Intelligence in EU framework programmes
• Vladislav Čadil, Miroslav Kostić: Formation of research and development consortia in the Competence Centres programme
• Vlastimil Růžička, Tomáš Vondrák: Analysis of the investments intervention effect from operational programmes upon the R&D infrastructure of the Czech public universities