Author: Iria Gonzalez

The ResInfra project Work Package 2 team, consisting of CNPq (WP leader), VTT (co-leader), FCT, MICITT and MINCIENCIAS, has updated the mapping of the LAC RI ecosystem which will be the basis for the bi-regional RI collaboration.

This mapping exercise has been based on previous exercises, drawing on the knowledge generated in previous projects and adding new infrastructures to those already identified. In addition, as an added value, this exercise includes information identifying the existing relevant collaborations between RIs in intra-LAC, EU-LAC, and when available, LAC-non EU countries, as well as good practices identified.

The mapping exercise began with the definition of a list of eligibility criteria to be applied for the inclusion of RIs in the LAC mapping and the definition of the scientific areas in which the RIs will be grouped. This has allowed establish a methodology for deepening the already existing mapping where needed and providing information.

As a result of an intense work that has included desk research, gap analysis on RI mappings and the design and launch of a Regional Survey of LAC RI National Mappings applied in the framework of EU-LAC WG on RI, WP2 has deepened the available mappings of LAC infrastructures, including 167 mapped RIs in total, with 92 updated RIs. The updating Of LAC RIs, however, is a continuous work that will continue to be carried out in the future.

The process of updating LAC RIs together with the  identification of state of the art on current collaborations and best practices in EU-LAC RI cooperation have served as a basis for the realization of a SWOT analysis. The deliverables 2.1 “Report on the criteria, scientific areas and methodology to develop the LAC RI landscape”, D 2.2  “Updated report on LAC RIs” and D 2.3 “LAC landscape analysis including SWOT and state of the art on current collaborations and best practices in EU-LAC RI cooperation” are available for download in the ResInfra web repository.

The work developed in this work group will be, together with the experience of the project pilots, the basis for the work to be carried out in other work packages of the project. This  is the case of the work done by ANID (leader), CNR (co-leader), UEFISCDI, FCT, VTT, CNPq, MICITT, MINCIENCIAS, AEI, DLR within WP3, whose objective is to collect data and to create a portfolio of EU and LAC RI roadmapping strategies, funding models and policy instruments, in order to select promising practices and lessons learnt; this is also the case of WP5, leaded by MEC, whose objective is give support to the EU-CELAC SOM Working Group on RI and make links with RI related bodies.

Horizon Europe is the EU’s funding program for Research & Innovation for the period 2021-202, with a budget of €95.5 billion. The first calls for proposals for collaborative research action were launched in June 2021.

In this context, EURAXESS, supported by the LAC Service Facility and the RedLAC NCP Network, have organised a launch event for Horizon Europe in LAC on next Thursday, July 8. The event will bring important information for Latin American stakeholders and researchers about how to take part in the program, with presentations on specific calls targeting LAC countries or matching the cooperation priority areas between LAC and the European Union (EU).

The launch event will be held in English with simultaneous interpretation into Spanish and will be live-streamed on Youtube.

Research actors from the public and the private sector from both LAC and the European Research Area (ERA) are invited to attend. Registration is mandatory, check out the agenda and register now here!

The European Strategic Forum of Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) has announced the approval of 11 new Research Infrastructures that will be included in the ESFRI 2021 roadmap. The approval has been decided after analyzing the results of the evaluation of the 18 proposals presented by the ESFRI Executive Committee.

The 11 approved infrastructures to be included in the Roadmap represent an investment of €4.1 billion in excellent science, contributing to address European challenges. These are:

• EBRAINS – European Brain ReseArch INfrastructureS, a distributed digital infrastructure at the interface of neuroscience, computing and technology, offering scientists and developers advanced tools and services for brain research.
• EIRENE RI – Research Infrastructure for EnvIRonmental Exposure assessment in Europe, the first EU infrastructure on human exposome (environmental determinants of health).
• ET – Einstein Telescope, the first and most advanced third-generation gravitational-wave observatory, with unprecedented sensitivity that will put Europe at the forefront of the Gravitation Waves research.
• EuPRAXIA – European Plasma Research Accelerator with Excellence in Applications, a distributed, compact and innovative accelerator facility based on plasma technology, set to construct an electron-beam-driven plasma accelerator in the metropolitan area of Rome, followed by a laser-driven plasma accelerator in European territory.
• GGP – The Generations and Gender Programme, aiming to provide high quality and cross-nationally comparable longitudinal data to answer pressing scientific and societal challenges on population and family dynamics.
• GUIDE – Growing Up in Digital Europe-EuroCohort, Europe’s first comparative birth cohort survey, aiming to support the development of social policies for the enhancement of the wellbeing of children, young people and their families across Europe.
• MARINERG-i – Offshore Renewable Energy Research Infrastructure, setting out to become the leading internationally Distributed Research Infrastructure in the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) sector, with a network of test facilities spread across Europe.
• OPERAS – Open Access in the European Research Area through Scholarly Communication, the distributed RI to enable Open Science and upgrade scholarly communication practices in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in line with the European Open Science Cloud.
• RESILIENCE – Religious Studies Infrastructure: Tools, Innovation, Experts, Connections and Centers, a unique, interdisciplinary scientific RI for all Religious Studies, building a high-performance platform, supplying tools and access to physical and digital data to scholars from all scientific disciplines.
• SLICES – Scientific Large-scale Infrastructure for Computing/Communication Experimental Studies ambitions to become an impactful RI in Digital Sciences, including concerns regarding energy consumption and the implementation of the Green Deal.
• SoBigData++ RI – European Integrated Infrastructure for Social Mining and Big Data Analytics, a resource for sharing datasets, methods, research skills and computational resources for supporting the comprehension of social phenomena through the lens of Big Data.

The approval of these new 11 research infrastructures hopes to strengthen the Roadmap by including new strategic projects and corresponds to a new level of ambition to develop unique, complex facilities for frontier science, supported by a renewed momentum for investments in RIs. Check out ESFRI website for more information.

Jana Kolar is elected as next ESFRI Chair
ESFRI has also announced the election of Jana Kolar as the Forum’s next chair, beginning in June 2022 and for two years. Jana Kolar is executive director of CERIC-ERIC and has a broad range of expertise, ranging from policy development and implementation, research and innovation, to entrepreneurship.

More information on Dr. Kolar election here.

Horizon Europe’s first work programmes are here! The work programmes set out funding opportunities under Horizon Europe for the period 2021 – 2022. The main work programme is structured as follows:

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions and Research Infrastructures under Pillar I
• All clusters under Pillar II – Health; Culture, Creativity And Inclusive Society; Civil Security For Society; Digital Industry And Space; Climate Energy And Mobility; Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture And Environment.
• European innovation ecosystems under Pillar III
• Widening participation and strengthening the European Research Area

The calls under the topic of Research Infrastructures, aligned under pillar I, are divided into five destinations that you can consult here:

• Destination – Developing, consolidating and optimising the European research infrastructures landscape, maintaining global leadership (INFRADEV), to contribute to a strong, excellent and impactful European Research Area, by reinforcing RI capacities in Europe, their role at the global level and the policy-making in this field;
• Destination – Enabling an operational, open and FAIR EOSC ecosystem (INFRAEOSC), aiming at delivering a “Web of FAIR Data and Services” for Science: a trusted virtual environment supporting Open Science, based on key horizontal core functions, with their corresponding e-infrastructures, and service layers accessible to researchers across disciplines throughout Europe; Horizon Europe – Work Programme 2021-2022 Research Infrastructures
• Destination – RI services to support health research, accelerate the green and digital transformation, and advance frontier knowledge (INFRASERV), with a focus on the provision of integrated RI services to enable R&I addressing major societal challenges, notably in health, in support of the green and digital transformation and ensuring resilience to crises as well as to support curiosity-driven research and advancement of frontier knowledge in broad scientific domains;
• Destination – Next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools and methods and advanced digital solutions (INFRATECH), to enable new discoveries and keep Europe’s RIs at the highest level of excellence, while paving the way to innovative solutions to societal challenges and new industrial applications, products and services;
• Destination – Network connectivity in Research and Education – Enabling  collaboration without boundaries (INFRANET), providing high-bandwidth networks and network services to interconnect researchers, data and computing resources in a nondiscriminatory way regardless of the location of the users and the resources to allow scientists to conduct excellent research.

Other work programmes cover

• European Research Council (ERC)
• Joint Research Centre (JRC)
• European Innovation Council (EIC)

Don’t miss the opportunity! Check out all the reference documents of the work programmes here.

The European Commission has announced the dates for the first edition of the Horizon Europe Info Days.

From June 28 to July 9, prospective applicants and other stakeholders of EU research and innovation will have the opportunity to receive information and ask questions about the funding instruments and processes of Horizon Europe. The event will be open for participation without prior registration.

Throughout the ten days there will be sessions related to nine topics, each dedicated to a different cluster or part of the new program. Research Infrastructures will have their turn on June 28 and the program is already available here.

Horizon Europe Info Days full calendar includes:

• 28 Jun – Infrastructures
• 29 & 30 Jun – Digital, industry & space (cluster 4)
• 30 June – Civil security for society (cluster 3)
• 1 July – Culture, creativity & inclusive society (cluster 2)
• 1 July – The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions: what is new under Horizon Europe
• 2 July – Health (cluster 1)
• 5 & 6 July – Climate, energy & mobility (cluster 5)
• 7 & 8 July – Food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture & environment (cluster 6)
• 9 July – European Research Area (ERA) & Widening

Check out the full program here.

On 18 May, the European Commission published a Communication on Europe’s strategy for international cooperation and its global approach to Research and Innovation. This Communication addresses the EU’s positions, priorities, challenges and objectives as a catalyst for internationalisation in research and innovation in a changing world marked by the experience of the pandemic.

Thus, the document presents a new European strategy that seeks to enhance multilateralism and reciprocal openness in research and innovation cooperation, enabling global responses to global challenges. To this end, the EC is committed to the open strategic autonomy of the European innovation ecosystem, combining it with its bilateral cooperation with non-EU countries in certain areas.

This strategy sets out the positions on the role that the EU should take on various issues relating to global research and innovation, and the actions that the EC will take accordingly. Among these, the strategy includes positions on EU commitment to international openness and fundamental values in research and innovation, the search for a balance between open science and the autonomy and values of the European Innovation System, or the EU’s role in promoting international collaboration in processes such as green and digital transitions, among others.

The strategy also provides room for EU cooperation approaches with priority countries and regions, including Latin America. Thus, the EU reaffirms in the Communication its compromise and support for the implementation of the EU-CELAC Strategic Roadmap on Science, Technology and Innovation, based on the four pillars of cooperation with the region: (i) global challenges, (ii) mobility of researchers, (iii) research infrastructures and (iv) innovation. Reaffirmation of this strategy, which guides the action of JIRI SOM, WG on RI and the ResInfra Project itself, reinforces the positive outlook for the role of EU-LAC bi-regional cooperation in R&I in the recovery of the coming years.

Access the document here.

European Research and Innovation Days are just around the corner! Registration for the European Commission’s annual event, which will take place online on 23 and 24 June 2021, is now open.

This edition will cover topics such as the start of Horizon Europe – the EU’s most ambitious research and innovation program – the role of research and innovation in the recovery of the COVID-19 pandemic and the steps towards ecological and digital transitions.

These important topics will be discussed during the two days of the event in plenary sessions and panel discussions, which will be broadcast live through five simultaneous channels. Check the program now and choose your sessions! Don’t forget to register here.

The third edition of the Open Forum of Sciences of Latin America and the Caribbean (CILAC) has kicked off today and will last until April 28. With more than 200 panelists, more than 100 activities and representation from more than 25 countries, CILAC promises to be once again an ideal space to discuss and define the future of science, technology and innovation (ICT) initiatives and policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Forum, which is held every two years itinerantly in different cities of the region – this time in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires – promotes the meeting and cooperation between scientists, entrepreneurs, policy makers, science outreach centers, scientific journalists, etc., allowing the exchange of experiences and the definition of strategies in ICT at regional level.

CILAC 2021 has as its main axis the role of science as a vector of inclusion. Around this axis four central themes have been defined that will explore the possibilities of science to help create more inclusive societies in the region: artifical intelligence; digital economy; inclusive science and climate change.

CILAC 2021 will develop in a vitural way, accompanying face-to-face activities in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. To view the program and register, visit the CILAC Forum website.

The European Commission has launched its first emergency funding under Horizon Europe. With a budget of 123 million euros, the calls included in this fund seek to complement the actions carried out so far in the fight against COVID-19, such as research and development of vaccines and treatments, providing the EC with knowledge and tools to prevent and respond to the impact of COVID.

The different calls, opened for the submition of proposals on April 15 and with a deadline of May 6, 2021, range from the development of fair and open data sharing instruments, vaccines & therapeutical clinical trials to research infrastructure services for rapid research responses to COVID-19.

Research infrastructures play an important role in this emergency fund through the call HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EMERGENCY-02: Research infrastructure services for rapid research responses to COVID-19 and other infectious disease epidemics. This call involves research infrastructures in the prevention and fight against COVID and expects to obtain proposals that enhance EU capacity to identify, characterise and mitigate the effects of COVID-19 virus variants of concern and future emerging pathogens, reinforce RI capacity to provide at scale and across the EU services to support excellent research, increase society’s long-term and consist problem-solving capacity and evidence-based policy making and provide new discoveries and knowledge breakthroughs enabled by access provision to the best and in some cases unique state-of-the-art RIs.

For more information on this call and submition of proposals, visit the webpage of EC funding & tender oportunities.

Latin America – Europe Symposium on Research Infrastructures, organised by ResInfra and RI-VIS – Horizon 2020 funded project designed to increase the visibility of European research infrastructures (RIs) -, will take place between Tuesday, June 15th and Thursday, June 17th 2021. With speakers from across EU-LAC, the Latin America – Europe Symposium on Research Infrastructures will deliver expert insight on how collaboration between these regions can benefit individual facilities and the overall research infrastructure community.

This virtual symposium will bring together delegates from Latin American and European research infrastructures (RIs), science policy organisations, researchers and research institutions from both regions with the aim of addressing the challenges and opportunities of biregional cooperation in the field of RI, and how the implementation of an effective roadmap can benefit both regions.

This dialogue is expected to enable effective identification of the challenges of cooperation and an advance the strengthening of bilateral relations. International cooperation in research, science and technology is a key element in addressing the global problems of the present and the future with greater efficiency and equity, and cooperation in RI plays a central role in this process. The Latin America – Europe Symposium on Research Infrastructures will be a great opportunity to move forward on this path.

From ResInfra and RI-VIS we encourage you to participate in this important event, which will be free through identification. You can register here and download the schedule below here: