European Commission responded to COVID-19 pandemic with a number of initiatives. The most important of these are summarised below. However, you can check the European Research Area (ERA) corona platform for information on related research & innovation!

H2020

An emergency call “SC1-PHE-CORONAVIRUS-2020: Advancing knowledge for the clinical and public health response to the 2019-nCoV epidemic” was announced on Jan 30, 2020. Original budget for this call was 10m which was subsequently increased up to €48.5 million. CALL LINK.

This call was closed on Feb 2020 and results came out on March 6. Initially 17 projects were selected and one more was added late March. See here and Attachment for the list of projects.

This was a very specific and targeted call mainly to scientific teams that had already been working in solutions. There were no Turkish institutions in this first call.

IMI

In addition to the above, the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the pharmaceutical industry, has launched a fast-track call for research proposals to develop treatments and diagnostics in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

IMI2 – Call 20 was dedicated to Covid-19: Development of therapeutics and diagnostics combatting coronavirus infections. This call opened on Mar 3 and closed on Mar 31. Fast Track Procedure. 144 proposals submitted.

There are 4 more IMI2 Open calls that are relevant to Health and medicine community. Although not explicitly dedicated to Covid-19 they do cover main aspects like digital health information, vaccine acceleration and more (All open calls of IMI2 are here).

EIC

The European Innovation Council (EIC) explicitly made a mention to urge SMEs work on COVID-19 actions (here). More than 4000 proposals were received with 1000 of them on COVID-19 actions.

This round closed on Mar 20, but call is recurrent so there will be next opportunities in Jun and Nov. (See here)

OTHER INITIATIVES

There are also plenty of other initiatives announced almost every day. These initiatives come from projects/consortia that have already received funding and call for further collaboration or sub-grants (Cascading funding). For instance: Exscalate4CoV (E4C) invites collaboration to screen potential drugs, or this initiative from Robotic Alliance (Here).

Last but not least, almost all call deadlines were extended. See all these extensions here.

In this unprecedented crisis of COVID-19 we are living, our team complying with the directives of MoIT and TUBITAK, is now working remotely from home.

Nevertheless, you can still reach us and we are available to help you with consultations and advice whenever you need it. You can reach us through the following channels:

• Our TH2020 Helpdesk
• Our Social Media Channels: Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Stay tuned, we are posting interesting articles daily.
• If you are an Information Multiplier you can connect through our IMS Platform.

For urgent matters you can reach out to Mr. Kemal Gungor: K.Gungor@idi.ie

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Within the scope of the “The Turkey in Horizon 2020 Phase II” Project, “National Advisory Group Meeting on Secure Societies” which aims to strengthen cooperation between national stakeholders and international stakeholders, as well as raising awareness of national stakeholders on secure societies, was held in TÜBİTAK headquarters on 5th March 2020.

The event was organized by TUBITAK in collaboration with Sabanci University EEN Office under the “Turkey in Horizon 2020 Phase II” Technical Assistance Project which is co-financed by the European Union and the Republic of Turkey and implemented by the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Industry and Technology within the scope of Competitive Sectors of Programme which was focused on preparation of successful H2020 proposal also pointed out success stories from Turkey continued with networking sessions and project presentations.

The participants of this event had a chance to meet partners and possible project proposers, technology providers and requesters. The main goal of the bilateral meetings were to offer matchmaking for research and development projects within the scope of Horizon 2020 Secure Societies Calls.

The event attracted 70 participants ranging from representing a diverse range of business sizes, sectors and public authorities which are in security thematic area.

Towards the end of last year, the European Innovation Council (EIC) launched the Accelerator Pilot Programme under the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument. This replaced the previous Phases 1 and 2 approach and introduced the new concept of ‘blended finance’ – a combination of EC grant with EC and private sector venture capital. We expect that Accelerator will continue in much the same form under the next Framework Programme, Horizon Europe which will commence in January 2021.

The Turkey in Horizon 2020 Phase II project has produced a leaflet giving a basic outline of Accelerator and a 24 page Guide which sets out the objectives, requirements and processes involved in more detail. We believe the Guide is the first publication to draw together detailed information for SMEs interested in applying. The English versions of the Guide and the leaflet may be seen at https://th2020.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360009900180-New-publications-on-the-EIC-Accelerator-a-first-for-Turkey- hard copies may be obtained from k.gungor@idi.ie .Versions in Turkish will be available soon.

In line with the Technical Assistance for Turkey in 2020 Phase II, a 2-day focus group training on clustering facilitated projects for new industrial value chains successfully organized in Ankara on 25^th and 26^th February 2020.Within the scope of the Project funded by European Union and Turkish Government, the  event was organized free of charge for the participants currently involve or interested in preparing proposals under the related programme. Trainings began with the information sessions about the Turkish project and Horizon 2020 and followed by sessions which focused on the strategies for approaching consortia and participating in INNOSUP-01 proposals and writing successful proposals in H2020 INNOSUP-01 calls. 50 participants representing a diverse range of business sizes and sectors, ranging from computer software production to biotechnology attended the event.

Check our extensive event material in our Helpdesk.

In line with the Technical Assistance for Turkey in 2020 Phase II, a 2-day focus group training on health, demographic change and wellbeing for the participants who are currently involved or interested in preparing proposal related with this field, was held in Ankara on 20^th and 21^st February 2020. The overall objective for the activity was to strengthen the proposals submitted by Turkish applicants. Trainings began with the introduction to the training and to the H2020 health calls and followed by the evaluation processes and writing successful proposals in H2020 calls. The event which focused on key aspects of proposal preparation, evaluation and sharing in the experience of international experts and other participants draw interest of more than 40 participants representing a diverse range of business sizes and sectors, ranging from computer software production to biotechnology were attended the event.

Visit our Helpdesk page of the event here.

The fourth in a series of 20 National Advisory Group Meetings was successfully staged at the Bogazici University, Istanbul on 18th February. The event attracted more than 150 participants ranging from academia, microbusinesses to larger enterprises, all of which are representing sector of electronic components and systems.

The ECSEL JU – the Public-Private Partnership for Electronic Components and Systems – funds Research, Development and Innovation projects for world-class expertise in these key enabling technologies, essential for Europe’s competitive leadership in the era of the digital economy.

Through the ECSEL JU, the European industry, SMEs and Research and Technology Organisations are supported and co-financed by 30 ECSEL Participating States and the European Union through Horizon2020 budget. ECSEL JU launches an annual Calls for Proposals for research, development and innovation projects.

The event was staged as part of the ‘Turkey in Horizon 2020 Phase II project, which is jointly funded by the Republic of Turkey and the European Union. The aim of the meeting was to better inform stakeholders about new call opened under ECSEL EU Joint Undertaking and to partner Turkish stakeholders with the key players in ECSEL initiative.

The event began with general information sessions about the ECSEL in Turkey. This was followed by information on the current call for proposals given by Yves GIGASE Head of Programmes of ECSEL. Examples of successful projects funded by ECSEL JU were presented by Knut Hufeld, Director Infineon Technologies AG, Dr. Juergen HOLZINGER, Program Manager, AVL LIST GmbH, Francois BRUNIER, Partnership Program Manager, SOITAC, and Erkan ISA, Fraunhofer EMFT.

Finally brokerage event was taken place where representatives of the sector from Turkey could meet ECSEL key players in face-to-face meetings and discuss project proposals and other means of collaboration.

Over 500 stakeholders have participated in the four National Advisory Group Meetings staged since the start of the project in January 2019.