Projects

Project CZERA 3 (Inter Excellence) 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.

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 STRATIN project responds to the current need associated with a relatively high degree of international closure of the research, development and innovation (R&D&I) system in the Czech Republic, which is reflected in low participation of research teams in EU framework programs, limited internationalization of research organizations and limited participation of the Czech Republic in international coordination of R&D&I support.

The project activities focus on the preparation of expert documents for the strategic management of international cooperation in R&D&I, which will be based on verified quantitative and qualitative data. In addition to the long-term strategic targeting of policies for the development of international cooperation, these documents will be directly usable by providers and research organizations themselves to initiate specific measures aimed at strengthening the internationalization of Czech research, especially in the context of the European Research Area.

Access2EIC follows the previous project Access4SME, which was completed in August 2019. It is a 16-months coordination and support action aimed to empower and facilitate transnational cooperation within the network of National Contact Points – NCPs focused on the Horizon 2020 European Innovation Council – EIC Pilot and the specific objective Access to Risk Finance – ARF. It involves a consortium made of formally appointed NCPs under ‘Future and Emerging Technologies – FET’, ‘Innovation in SMEs – SME’ and ‘Access to Risk Finance – ARF’ areas of Horizon 2020.

The networkt will aim at:

• developing an improved, more consistent and professionalised NCP service across Europe, thereby helping simplify access to EIC Pilot calls, and lowering the entry barriers for newcomers;
• identifying and sharing good practices and raising the general standard of support to EIC and ARF programme applicants, taking into account the novelties of this transition period and the diversity of actors that make up their constituency.

COSMOS 2020 plus, the EU funded network of National Contact Points (NCPs) for Space Research and Aeronautics  aims to strengthen NCP mutual cooperation.
The main target of the COSMOS project, from its beginning during FP7 to the current COSMOS2020plus under Horizon 2020, is to allow NCPs to benefit from each other’s experience and thus raise the overall quality of their services. Additional information services are established like a joint website and a news service, providing information about Space and EU Framework Programme related topics.

The project aims to develop and test a tool box for evaluation of economic impacts of policies and programmes of targeted support of firms‘ R&D and science-industry cooperation with regards to different targeting of programmes/measures and their implementation, diversity of firms and business conditions.

The project should answer the following questions:

• What types of enterprises are supported (what are their economic and R&D characteristics);
• What are the types of supported projects;
• What is the R&D strategy of firms receiving direct R&D support;
• What are the economic impacts of targeted support of R&D and what are the impacts depending on the type (strategy) of the company;
• How to evaluate the economic impacts of targeted support of R&D in the Czech business sector.

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 the INFRAM project is to support effective management of research infrastructures at institutional and national level. A partial goal is to identify the factors of strategic management of research infrastructures that are considered essential by managers of research infrastructures and policy makers responsible for management at national level. Thereafter, suitable tools will be proposed to improve management at institutional and national level. These tools will be pilot tested in cooperation with application guarantors representing the institutional level of management of research infrastructures.

The main objective of the Ideal-ist2020 project is to strengthen the LEIT ICT network of national contacts (NCPs) under Horizon 2020, by supporting transnational networking. Through the project, better and more professional NCP services will be achieved across Europe to facilitate access to the call information. Activities include trainings and seminars for selected target groups, provision of services to applicants in the form of pre / full-proposal checks, support for building consortia through organizing partner exchanges (brokerage) and personal meetings, exchanging experiences and sharing best practices.
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. Ideal-ist2020 builds on the completed Ideal-ist2018 project.

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.

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 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.

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 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.
The project RICH 2 (Research Infrastructures Consortium for Horizon 2020) is built on activities of previous project EuroRIs-Net + and following RICH project.

RISIS2 project builds on the previous RISIS project (2014-2018) - the European Research infrastructure for science, technology and innovation policy studies. The main task of this project is to maintain and enlarge existing datasets dealing with firm innovation capacities, public research developments, R&I outputs and projects, and policy learning. Moreover, it is intended to develop new datasets on 4 key issues for research and policy (social innovation, non-technological innovation, the role of PhDs in society, portfolios of public funding instruments).

Technology Centre CAS was invited to participate in the RISIS2 since 2019. The main reason was a former experience of TC with R&D systems in the new EU member countries (EU-13). The database of European research projects (EUPRO) has been developed under the former RISIS project. This database will be further developed by including the datasets on national research projects (NATPRO).
TC will contribute mainly to this part of the RISIS2 project.

Main goal of the project is to explore and evaluate the conditions for utilizing the expected impacts of the socio-technical changes, and on this basis design a methodological tool that will help to implement the concept of Rural 3.0 in the development strategies prepared by the Local Actions Groups.

Main outcome of the project is a certified methodology based on the extensive and systematic research on the development processes and capacity of the rural areas to adapt to expected changes during the 21st century for improving the quality of life.

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 3 is the international network of National Contact Points for Science with and for Society programme in Horizon 2020 (SwafS).
The main objective of this programme is to search for ways how to communicate information from the research to the citizens, and how to promote dialogue between science and society. SiS.net 3 is a continuing project and is managed by 15 partners, the Technology Centre CAS is one of them. SiS.net 3 provides the SwafS NCPs with room for active cooperation. SiS.net 3 enhances their good quality services to Science with and for Society stakeholders, and provides them with training on core SwafS objectives – science education, science communication, scientific careers and public engagement, research ethics, open science and gender equality.