In the rapidly evolving landscape of digital innovation, Europe stands at the forefront, offering numerous opportunities for researchers, developers, and businesses. Open European calls for digital technologies play a pivotal role in fostering this digital transformation, providing funding and support for groundbreaking projects. But what exactly are these calls, and how can you benefit from them? Let's dive in!
Understanding the Importance of Digital Technologies in Europe
Europe's commitment to digital transformation is evident in its strategic initiatives, policies, and funding opportunities. From AI to blockchain, the continent is keen on harnessing the power of emerging technologies to drive economic growth, enhance citizen services, and ensure a sustainable future. These technologies revolutionise industries and play a crucial role in addressing societal challenges.
The Role of Open European Calls in Promoting Digital Innovation
Open European calls for digital technologies serve as a bridge between innovation and implementation. They invite tech enthusiasts, startups, and established entities to submit proposals that align with Europe's digital objectives. These calls are a testament to Europe's dedication to nurturing a vibrant tech ecosystem, ensuring that groundbreaking ideas receive the support they need to flourish.
Highlighted Open European Calls for Digital Technologies
AI Solutions to Improve Productivity in Key Sectors
Deadline: 08/11/2023
Innovate UK, under UK Research and Innovation, is offering up to £32 million for innovation projects centred on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). The focus is on enhancing transport, construction, agriculture, and creative industries. Proposals should target one of the priority sectors, demonstrating how the AI/ML solution will boost business productivity or efficiency. Potential areas include data-driven decision-making, automation of tasks, project management, supply chain optimization, waste management, IP management, and design. The competition has two strands: collaborative R&D projects and single entities. Ensure you apply to the right strand, as transfers are not permitted. The competition is competitive and closes at 11 am UK time on the specified deadline. The maximum grant funding request is £100,000.
Interregional Innovation Investments Strand 1
Deadline: 17/10/2023
The primary goal of this call is to offer both financial and advisory support for interregional innovation investments in shared and complementary smart specialisation areas across European value chains. These investments aim to develop innovation and capitalize on available research results within specific value chains, led by regional innovation ecosystems with businesses at the forefront. The projects should have a minimum TRL 6, focusing on demonstration, market uptake, and commercialization.
Key Points:
- Objective: Foster innovation in transport, construction, agriculture, and creative industries.
- Focus Areas: Data-driven decision-making, task automation, project management, supply chain optimization, waste management, IP management, and design.
- Strands: Collaborative R&D projects and single entities.
- Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP): Offers "Cascade funding" for grants, allowing SMEs to complete specific tasks. FSTP costs should not exceed 30% of total eligible costs.
- Investment in Companies: At least 70% of total eligible costs should be allocated to investments in companies, emphasizing SMEs.
- Thematic Priorities: Digital transition, Green transition, and Smart manufacturing.
- Recognition as Regional Innovation Valleys: Regions can be recognized as Regional Innovation Valleys if they meet specific conditions, including endorsement from the competent regional or national institution and a fully signed grant agreement.
Applicants are encouraged to engage with the wider community, including innovation ecosystems and Regional Innovation Valleys. This call aligns with the New European Innovation Agenda and the 2023-2024 Horizon Europe European Innovation Ecosystems (EIE) Work Programme.
ATM Excellent Science and Outreach for Multimodality and Passenger Experience
Deadline: 15/11/2023
Expected Outcomes:
- Environment: Solutions should reduce environmental impacts, such as emissions, noise, and local air quality. They should also enhance the aviation environmental footprint through better gate-to-gate planning and improve passenger flows.
- Capacity: Solutions should enhance capacity by providing real-time multimodal passenger constraint information, reducing departure delays.
- Passenger Experience: Solutions should enhance the passenger journey by sharing air transport data with travel service providers for better intermodal planning.
- Cost-efficiency: Solutions should enable new business models based on data-sharing standards, creating more value within an integrated transport system.
- Operational Efficiency: Solutions should allow for improved planning, optimizing every flight by balancing individual constraints against network constraints.
Scope:
- The goal is for 90% of travelers within Europe to complete their door-to-door journey within 4 hours by 2050.
- The challenge is to develop innovative solutions to achieve this, considering Air Traffic Management (ATM) as an integral part of an intermodal transport system.
- The SESAR 3 JU has identified several research elements, including understanding passenger expectations, managing passenger access to airports, developing the concept of a multimodal airport, integrating ATM with European Mobility as a Service (MaaS), and creating digital twins for airports.
- Research should also focus on information sharing and governance in an integrated transport network and developing a harmonized concept for multimodal mobility in the European Integrated Transport Network.
Non-Thematic Development Actions by SMEs
Deadline: 22/11/2023
Objective: The call emphasizes the pivotal role of innovative SMEs in swiftly and cost-effectively transforming technology and research outcomes into defence products. This can be achieved by adapting technologies from civilian applications or addressing hybrid warfare. Successful SMEs will receive Business Coaching to expedite the transition of results to subsequent phases, such as development.
Scope: Proposals should focus on:
- Innovative defence products, solutions, and technologies that enhance the readiness, deployability, reliability, safety, and sustainability of defence forces in tasks and missions.
- Areas of interest include blockchain applications for friend or foe identification, cybersecurity talent screening tools, artificial intelligence, robotic autonomous systems, naval platform management, ship signature management, underwater communication solutions, soldier physiological and cognitive state monitoring, recycling of soldier equipment waste, water reuse in deployable camps, and synthetic fuel production from waste for military use.
Expected Impact:
- Introduction of innovative, rapid, and cost-effective defence solutions.
- Adoption of groundbreaking concepts, novel approaches, and technologies previously unapplied in the defence sector.
- Boosted innovation capacity across Europe through SME involvement.
- Potential for new market creation for SMEs, especially in facilitating SME access to defence markets and supply chains.
- Strengthening of European technological, industrial ecosystems, and defence supply chains.
Maximising the Potential of Synthetic Data Generation in Healthcare Applications
Deadline: 16/01/2024
Expected Outcome: Proposals should ensure:
- Access for academic and industrial researchers to robust synthetic data generation methodologies, including open source, for creating and sharing synthetic patient data.
- Availability of high-quality synthetic datasets for researchers.
- Enhanced range of AI-based and data-driven tools for healthcare providers and industry, aiding in diagnostics, personalized treatment decisions, and health outcome predictions.
Scope: The use of individual patient data in healthcare research is often limited due to privacy, security, IP, and other concerns. Synthetic health data, artificially created to resemble individual patient data, can alleviate these issues, promoting the swift development of reliable data-driven methods. The challenge lies in determining the best synthetic data generation (SDG) method for specific use cases and understanding the categorization of detailed synthetic data.
Projects should:
- Form a consortium of synthetic data experts, data owners, and healthcare solution developers.
- Develop and validate SDG methods for specific healthcare use cases using high-quality datasets.
- Address data types not currently well-represented, such as device data, image data, and genomic data.
- Generate fully synthetic datasets, hybrid datasets, and synthetically-augmented datasets.
- Focus on bias in source data and SDG methods.
- Validate SDG methods using source data, assessing re-identification risks.
- Showcase the quality and applicability of the synthetic data through model development.
- Promote project results through effective communication and outreach.
Expected Impact: The topic aims to:
- Increase the availability of interoperable synthetic data generation methodologies and datasets, facilitating R&D of integrated products and services for patient benefit.
- Gain insights into real-life patient behavior and challenges using m-health and e-health technologies.
- Develop advanced analytics/AI tools for health research, leading to better clinical decision support, faster prototyping, shorter times-to-market for personalized health interventions, and evidence of the value of new digital health and AI tools.
Conclusion
The open European calls for digital technologies are more than just funding opportunities; they are a testament to Europe's commitment to digital excellence. Whether you're an AI enthusiast, a digital startup, or an established tech entity, these calls offer a platform to showcase your innovations and contribute to Europe's digital future. So, gear up, dive into the details, and seize these opportunities!
