More than 300 new Horizon Europe grants will open in the coming days!

✔ Cluster 6 - Food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment (100 new grants) https://bit.ly/3FBXATt
✔ Cluster 4 – Digital, industry and space (90 new grants) https://bit.ly/3FjiqWm
✔ Cluster 5 – Climate, energy and mobility (83 new grants) https://bit.ly/3Hk97YF
✔ Cluster 2 – Culture, creativity and inclusive society (28 new grants) https://bit.ly/3UFBzau

Furthermore, the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI JU) has just published a new call for proposals covering diseases of unmet public health need, rare diseases, mental health, hospital efficiencies, and patient-generated evidence.

We are proud to be the management and dissemination partner within this project that will contribute to the exploration of deep space, where the sun cannot deliver sufficient power to spacecrafts, by overcoming obstacles to the development of Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS).

We are excited to support this Euratom/Horizon Europe project that will contribute to the closure of the nuclear fuel cycle with management and dissemination activities! Read the project launch press release on the project's LinkedIn page.

ARTTIC is proud to have supported six of the 20 proposals selected in this first call for proposals of the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking. To read the full story, refer to the CAJU press release.

Our European Commission-funded UHMob project aims at designing, synthesizing, and assessing the performance of a novel generation of organic semiconductors, creating a favourable environment for industrial innovations.
 
In the context of this project, an international event is organised from 6 to 9 September in Mainz, Germany, which will bring together experts on molecular design, synthesis, spectroscopy, and characterization of organic semiconductors.

To get more info on the conference and register, please visit the conference website.
-    Discover the renowned researchers who have already accepted our invitation to speak.
-    Deadline for abstracts and poster sessions: 31/07/2022

The PNO Group, of which ARTTIC is a part of, has created an online magazine about the Horizon Europe programme. The magazine offers a detailed overview of all programme components, as well as practical looks at topics as gender equality, impact and how to successfully apply. With this tool you will create a funding strategy with impact!

What you will learn
The Horizon Europe magazine gives you a complete overview of the most important and new features within Horizon Europe. You will learn:

•             what the objectives and the novelties are of the Horizon Europe programme (explained in a one-minute video)

•             why gender equality is important in Horizon Europe

•             how to write a successful proposal

•             the difference between the three pillars and six clusters

•             how to improve your Horizon Europe chances

•             how to successfully implement the impact requirements in your proposal

•             the definitions of terms frequently used in Horizon Europe in our glossary.

Download magazine
Would you like to receive the free online magazine? Download the brand-new Horizon Europe Magazine here

ARTTIC is proud to support the UHMob project, which is developing a new generation of semiconductors while training tomorrow’s scientific leaders, with management and dissemination activities. 

Almost all of today's electronic technology involves the use of semiconductors, mostly silicon semiconductors. Organic semiconductors represent an innovative solution towards flexible, large-area, cost-efficient circuits and devices. However, before such semiconductors can reach the market, issues with performance, processing and reliability need to be solved.

The European Commission funded UHMob project, bringing together 10 partners in 7 different countries[i], aims to design, synthesise and assess the performance of a novel generation of organic semiconductors, creating a favourable environment for industrial innovations. These semiconductors are cheap to produce and allow additive manufacturing of electronic circuits.

As part of an International Training Network (ITN) of the Marie Sklodowska Curie Action (MSCA), UHMob also seeks to deliver the finest quality research training and transfer of knowledge in an interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral, and emerging supra-disciplinary field, to a group of 15 early-stage-researchers (ESRs) to educate them to become future scientific leaders.

Halfway into the project, several innovative semiconductors have been synthesised and characterised for its quality and properties. Different elements have been optimised and tested to improve the performance of organic semiconductors. Project partners have also investigated and optimised organic field-effect transistor (OFET) devices with several novel molecular semiconductors developed in the programme.

From an educational point-of-view, 15 ESRs have continuously been trained in different interdisciplinary technical issues related to scientific objectives of the project as well as in a large variety of soft skills.

They have also been actively committed to disseminating results through papers and online events and also to communicating about the project in social media via Twitter and LinkedIn.

“While searching for the next steps in my scientific path, it was an obvious decision to choose a Marie-Curie PhD since it brings great opportunities for collaboration and networking, essential to grow as a scientist. It also contributes significantly to the development of not only technical and scientific but also personal skills”, says one of the 15 ESRs of the UHMob network. 

For more information about the project, please visit the project public website www.uhmob.eu

On 12 October 2021, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, presented a new investment plan, France 2030, at the Elysée Palace. The goal of this ambitious, 30-billion-euro plan is to foster the emergence of tomorrow’s technological champions and to accompany the digital and environmental transition in sectors in which the country excels, most notably the automotive, aeronautics and space industries.

We have drafted an article that will help you better understand this plan that underpins the country's environmental and digital transition. It will most notably allocate 8 billion euros to reaching decarbonisation objectives.

Download the article in English

Read the article in French

H2020 ILEAnet Project is organising its final workshop entitled “ILEAnet and the EU security Research and Innovation landscape: Achievements and way forward”. This online event will take place on 6 and 7 April 2022.

The workshop is intended for Law Enforcement Agencies, researchers, solution developers and policy makers from across Europe and is meant to:  

1. Demonstrate how the ILEAnet results can contribute to the current thinking and further developments of the EU security Research and Innovation landscape
2. Share an overview of the different assets provided by the ILEAnet project (including best practices and recommendations) and their benefits to the LEA community
3. Reflect on the key benefits and opportunities offered by a Network of Practitioners through the ILEAnet experience
4. Present a strategic approach to building on the ILEAnet experience and maximising the future impact of a Network of Practitioners

To know more about this event, please see on the project public website at: bit.ly/32Os6ZD

Stay tuned via our social media network:

https://twitter.com/ILEAnet_project
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ileanet-project-scientific-coordination/

Projects financed under #HorizonEU are expected to thoroughly consider the sex and gender dimension of the research when devising a scientific approach and interpreting results. What is more, gender equality within the project implementation teams will be carefully scrutinised.

An article by ARTTC consultant Christiane Abele expands on sex and gender in the study design as well as gender equality in project implementation. 

New Horizon Europe grants addressing EU Missions were published late December:
✔Oceans, seas and waters
✔Soil, health, food 
✔Cancer 

An additional group of calls related to the “Adaptation to climate change” mission is scheduled for publication later this month 

For prospective participants, the Commission organises the EU Missions Info-days on 18-19 January  

If you require support with your proposal, do not hesitate to get in touch

In the "impact" section of your Horizon Europe proposal, you are expected to explain how your project is targeting the appropriate destination linked to the specific topic.

In this e-paper, Carlos Triay, Senior Consultant at ARTTIC, explains how to go about it with a sample topic from Cluster 6. 

DOWNLOAD E-PAPER

Over 79 grants are currently open for submission under Cluster 6, which aims at reducing environmental degradation; halting and reversing the decline of biodiversity on land, inland waters and sea; and better managing natural resources through transformative changes of the economy and society in both urban and rural areas.

Cluster 6 encompasses the following fields:
·        environmental observation
·        biodiversity and natural resources
·        agriculture, forestry and rural areas
·        seas, oceans and inland waters
·        food systems
·        bio-based innovation systems in the EU's bioeconomy
·        circular systems

View all grants currently accepting submissions

If you need support with your proposal, you can exchange with our consultants

Over 40 grants are currently accepting submissions under Cluster 5 and more publications are planned between October and December. Click here to see the list of open and scheduled grants. 

Cluster 5 of Horizon Europe aims to fight climate change by better understanding its causes, evolution, risks, impacts and opportunities, and by making the energy and transport sectors more climate and environment-friendly, more efficient and competitive, smarter, safer and more resilient.

As for each cluster of the Horizon Europe programme, objectives called "destinations" have been defined:
1. Climate sciences and responses for the transformation towards climate neutrality
2. Cross-sectoral solutions for the climate transition
3. Sustainable, secure and competitive energy supply
4. Efficient, sustainable and inclusive energy use
5. Clean and competitive solutions for all transport modes
6. Safe, resilient transport and smart mobility services for passengers and goods

If you need support with your proposal, you can exchange with our consultants

Planning and implementing effective communication, dissemination and exploitation activities are key to ensure that valuable insight and innovative results generated by your project are deployed to their full potential.

In collaboration with our sister company, PNO France, we have drafted an e-paper to provide a comprehensive overview of these three aspects:

• Defining and differentiating the three concepts
• Main activities within each area
• Tips for success
• Horizon Europe novelties

DOWNLOAD IN ENGLISH

DOWNLOAD IN FRENCH

 We hope that you find it useful!

Contact us to receive more information about the support that we can offer in the design and execution of your project's communication, dissemination and exploitation strategy.

The expected dates for the opening of the next Innovation Fund calls have been announced!

More information:

• Large-scale projects
• Small-scale projects

 The 2021 LIFE grants are now open for submission, totaling 580M EUR for climate action and environmental projects covering topics that reflect the European Green Deal objectives, namely:

• Nature and biodiversity
• Circular economy and quality of life
• Climate change mitigation and adaptation
• Clean energy transition 

List of grants
Information about the programme

• Health
• Culture, creativity, inclusive societies
• Civil security for society
• Digital, industry, space
• Climate, energy, mobility
• Food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture, environment
• Innovative Europe (European Innovation Council)
• Excellent Science (ERC, MSCA, research infrastructures) 

Is your organisation considering submitting a proposal? Our consultants can support you.

• Feasibility assessment 
• Proposal writing
• Partner research 

Contact our offices

The European Commission and industry will jointly invest €22 billion in research and innovation to meet EU Green Deal objectives and boost digital and industrial leadership during the 2021-2027 period.

The new partnerships are:

• European Open Science Cloud
• Artificial Intelligence, Data and Robotics
• Photonics
• Clean Steel – Low Carbon Steelmaking
• Made in Europe
• Processes4Planet
• People-centric Sustainable Built Environment (Built4People)
• Zero-emission Road Transport (2Zero)
• Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility
• Towards a competitive European industrial battery value chain
• Zero Emission Waterborne Transport

See the description of the partnerships

The H2020 ILEAnet (Innovation by Law Enforcement Agencies Networking) EU project in which ARTTIC is involved, is holding on 9, 10 and 11 June 2021 a virtual Public Workshop on Standardisation in Security Research.

The objective of this event is to better understand the benefits of standardisation in security research and reflect on ways to facilitate the involvement of law enforcement practitioners in standardisation activities and in Research & Innovation

The public workshop is addressed to LEAs, standardisation professionals, academics and security solution providers.

Registration is now open and is done via email to the ILEAnet Scientific Coordination at: ensp-ileanet@interieur.gouv.fr It is free of charge and covers the whole event. Once registered, you will be sent closer to the date a link to the secure “Go To Meeting” conference platform. You will then be able to connect during this 3 day event and attend the sessions for which you have an interest.

Looking forward to welcoming you to this 4^th ILEAnet Workshop.

For more information on the event and final programme, please visit ILEAnet public website.

ARTTIC and its sister company PNO Consultants France will jointly participate to the conference “Future Intelligence 2021”. The event will be online and will take place from June 1st to June 3rd, 2021.

Future intelligence, an event dedicated to artificial intelligence

The ‘Future Intelligence 2021’ conference focuses on the development of artificial intelligence and big data with disruptive innovations for applications in key sectors: transport, health and pharmaceuticals, security, defence...

ARTTIC, the European leader in the set-up and the funding of innovation will lead a workshop June 3rd, 2021 where funding programmes supporting development of artificial intelligence, big data and related innovative applications will be briefly presented as well as tips and tricks to identify the most suitable funding programme, to set up the necessary partnerships and to submit in due time a relevant, eligible, credible and convincing demand for funding.

ARTTIC & PNO, a complementary partnership.

ARTTIC joined the PNO Group in May 2019. To maximise technical and sectoral complementarities, ARTTIC and PNO Consultants France have joined forces to deliver services covering the entire innovation cycle: from strategy to implementation.

An unrivalled expertise, with track record of 120 successful Horizon 2020 project proposals in the transport, health, pharmaceuticals, security, defence, energy, food and bioeconomy fields, three decades of experience serving a portfolio of 400 clients and an established network of 2,000 organisations worldwide combined with strong European presence with offices in Toulouse, Paris, Brussels and Derby (UK) make ARTTIC and PNO Consultants France sound partners to advise and support your organisation in the funding, the set-up and the management of your research and innovation projects.

Are you participating in Future Intelligence 2021? Do not hesitate to book a virtual meeting with us, our consultants will guide you to find the best financing for your project.

New European H2020 EURATOM research project:
INNOvative tools FOR dismantling of GRAPHite moderated nuclear reactors
INNO4GRAPH

What are the most optimal ways to dismantle graphite reactors? What remote tools can help operators to safely remove radioactive graphite? What solutions will be the most cost-efficient for dismantling operations in reactors of such complexity and dimension? These are questions that the recently launched Inno4Graph project is trying to answer through the development of physical and digital tools and methods to support the decommissioning of European graphite reactors.

The three-year EU-funded project INNO4GRAPH, which started on 1st September 2020, is addressing this need in two different phases:

• Tools and methods will be used during tests and studies upstream of the dismantling operations to:

• Get an excellent knowledge of both the graphite properties thanks to in-situ measurement of cracks and corrosion and the dismantling tools to be used;
• Evaluate the efficiency of the use of innovative tools in order to define the most adapted scenario for each reactor regarding the local context (technical constraints, regulations, …) in terms of safety and cost-efficiency thanks to scenario grid analysis, mock-ups for physical tests and digital 3D models.

• Innovative cutting and handling tools will then be made available during the dismantling operations.

The launch by EDF, the Coordinator of the Project, of a full-scale graphite reactor dismantling demonstrator in Chinon, France, in 2022 will facilitate the uptake and further development of the tools developed during the project.

To respond as efficiently as possible to these major challenges, leading nuclear industries and research partners have joined their expertise and efforts in the following pan-European INNO4GRAPH consortium:

• Electricité de France, EDF, France
• Empresa Nacional De Residuos Radioactivos S.A, ENRESA, Spain
• Graphitech, France,
• Cyclife Digital Solutions, FranceCommissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives, CEA, France
• Societa Gestione Impianti Nucleari, SOGIN, Italy
• Lithuanian Energy Institute, LEI, Lithuania
• Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per la Ricerca Tecnologica Nucleare, CIRTEN-POLIMI, Italy
• The University of Manchester, United Kingdom
• Westinghouse Electric, Spain
• Ansaldo Nucleare, Italy
• TECNATOM, Spain
• ARTTIC, France

The INNO4GRAPH project is labelled by both the French competitiveness cluster “Nuclear Valley” and the SNETP Association, the Sustainable Nuclear Energy Technology Platform. The consortium is also supported by an end user advisory group including, in addition to the operators of the consortium, the Lithuanian graphite nuclear power plant operator of Ignalina (IAE) and the Japan Atomic Power Company (JAPC).
The advisory groups will interact on the project results based on the current dismantling situation of the graphite reactors and help disseminating the project work progress to international bodies or events.

This project has received funding from the Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018 under grant agreement No 945273 for an EU contribution of three million euros.

More information on the project can be found at:

• Cordis.europa.eu/project/id/945273
• twitter.com/inno4graph
• www.linkedin.com/company/inno4graph-project/
• www.Inno4Graph.eu/ (to come soon)

CONTACT:
INNO4GRAPH-Coordination@eurtd.com

After laborious negotiations and a little like a Christmas miracle, a Trade and Cooperation Agreement was concluded between the European Union and the United Kingdom, on 24 December 2020. Brexit has finally come to an end and is awaiting its validation by the European Parliament in January 2021.

WHAT DO WE KNOW…

Horizon 2020

For UK companies participating in a Horizon 2020 project, the conditions will remain unchanged until the end of the project, as long as the UK fulfils its commitments under the Withdrawal Agreement.

Erasmus

The United Kingdom has decided to no longer participate in the ERASMUS student exchange programme. Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, has announced a replacement programme called the "Turing Programme".

European Innovation Council

The United Kingdom will no longer have access to the European Innovation Council (EIC) funds. The EIC Accelerator Programme is the successor to the popular and successful Horizon 2020 SME Instrument programme.

WHICH PARTNERSHIP FOR HORIZON EUROPE?

The details of the UK's participation in the European Framework Programme, Horizon Europe, will be detailed in an agreement that remains to be negotiated. Both sides have already indicated their wish that UK companies should be able to participate in the activities from the start of the programme.

So, what kind of agreement can be expected?

If an agreement is concluded, then the UK will be considered as an "associated state". This status does not give access to decision-making power in the comitology or expert bodies set up by the European Union.

If no agreement is concluded, the United Kingdom will be considered as a "third country". UK companies will be able to participate in the Horizon Europe programme but will not be eligible for EU grants.

Want to know more?

Do you want to know more? Stay tuned and do not hesitate to contact our experts who will keep you updated on the progress of the Horizon Europe Programme agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union: info-paris@eurtd.com

The COVID-19 health crisis hit Europe suddenly and severely. A Europe which, in order to rebuild itself, voted an economic recovery plan of 750 billion euros, resulting in the cutting of several European programmes including Horizon Europe.

Horizon Europe: A reduced budget

On 23 July 2020, the European Parliament approved a European economic recovery plan with a budget of 750 billion euros. Horizon Europe, the framework programme for research and innovation (2021-2027), has had its budget decreased from 94 billion euros to 84.9 billion euros, a cut of 10 billion euros.

On 10th of November 2020, when Horizon Europe's budget was set at 80.9 billion euros, and after tough negotiations, the European Parliament and the European Council finally increased this budget by 4 billion euros. It is now a matter of deciding how the budget will be distributed between the different areas of the programme, on how it could be used in coordination with other EU funding sources and on which countries outside the Union will be allowed to participate.

However, Horizon Europe is not the only framework programme to have revised its budget downwards because the investment programme InvestEU, the European defence funds, ERASMUS and EU4Health have also had a truncated budget.

The consequences for the Research and Innovation

Among the sectors most affected by this decrease are health and climate initiatives. Two sectors that were considered to be priority areas during the implementation of the framework programme. These sectors are part of the second pillar "Global Issues and European Industrial Competitiveness" which has a budget of more than 47 billion euros, i.e. more than half of the total budget of Horizon Europe. We do not know, for the moment, which themes will be highlighted by these sectors. Nevertheless, will this be enough to face the societal challenges and strengthen Europe's competitiveness?

The budget of the Horizon 2020 framework programme (2014-2020) was 79 billion euros. With this cutting, the new European Horizon Europe Framework Programme has "only" slightly less than 2 billion euros of additional budget than its predecessor, although its visions are much more ambitious.

A reduced budget and a "post-pandemic" atmosphere could have serious consequences when Horizon Europe will be launched in 2021:

• A framework programme that might not live up to the ambitious objectives it proposes (sustainable development, artificial intelligence, new health policies...).
• A concern for SMEs, due to increased competitiveness between EU countries in hopes of being funded
• An impact on the willingness of European and third countries to contribute financially

The first drafts of the work programmes and public consultation were published in September 2020. Subject to the adoption of the new 2021-2027 budget, the first calls for proposals should be published in the first half of 2021.

And the United Kingdom in all this...

Although there’s still uncertainty about numerous aspects of Brexit, the United Kingdom will no longer be part of the European Union in 2021. While negotiations are dragging on for a future trade agreement, both London and Brussels want the United Kingdom to be part of the Horizon Europe adventure, without agreeing on its role within the framework programme.

PNO Consultants France and ARTTIC have joined forces to deliver services covering the complete innovation cycle, from strategy to implementation, while maximising technical and sectoral complementarities. An unrivalled expertise, attested by over 120 successful Horizon 2020 proposals in the transport, health, security, energy, food and bioeconomy fields; three decades of experience serving a portfolio of 400 clients; and a strong European presence through our offices in Paris, Toulouse, Derby (UK) and Brussels make PNO Consultants France and ARTTIC sound partners to advise your organisation in the financing, set-up and management of research and innovation projects.

Nathalie Authelet-de Fleury, PNO Consultants France

The European Commission has launched a call for projects supporting the Farm-to-Fork Strategy – one of the eight thematic areas of the EU Green Deal. The aim of the Green Deal is to transform Europe's economy for a sustainable future, making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. The ambition of the Green Deal call is in line with the scale of the challenge: nearly €1 billion are on the table to finance research and innovation that will drive the necessary environmental, social and economic transformations.

Farm-to-Fork budget

The Farm-to-Fork call is part of "LC-GD-6-1-2020 Testing and demonstrating systemic innovations in support of the Farm-to-Fork Strategy", with a budget of 74 million euros of the 983 million euros available under the Green Deal programme.

Deadline

The call closes on 26^th of January 2021.

The Green Deal Action Plan

The European Green Deal programme has defined two specific objectives in its action plan:

• to encourage and promote the sustainable use of resources, moving towards a non-polluting and circular economy
• restoring and preserving biodiversity while reducing environmental pollution

The objectives of Farm-to-Fork

The Farm to Fork strategy focuses on the achievement of a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system.

More specifically, it aims at:

• ensuring sustainable food production and consumption
• facilitating the transition to healthy and sustainable diets
• ensuring food security
• stimulating sustainable food processing, wholesale and retail and food service practices
• reducing food waste and spoilage

• combating food fraud throughout the food supply chain

Conditions of application

The consortium must include at least three independent legal entities, established in an EU Member State or in a country associated to Horizon 2020.

PNO Consultants France and ARTTIC have joined forces to deliver services covering the complete innovation cycle, from strategy to implementation, while maximising technical and sectoral complementarities. An unrivalled expertise, attested by over 120 successful Horizon 2020 proposals in the transport, health, security, energy, food and bioeconomy fields; three decades of experience serving a portfolio of 400 clients; and a strong European presence through our offices in Paris, Toulouse, Derby (UK) and Brussels make PNO Consultants France and ARTTIC sound partners to advise your organisation in the financing, set-up and management of research and innovation projects.

Nathalie Authelet-de Fleury, PNO Consultants France

PNO supports a successful application to carry our studies for a CO2 Export Terminal at the Port of Antwerp

PNO supported the application 'Antwerp Liquid CO2 Export Terminal Studies' which was successful under the CEF (Connecting Europe Facility) Energy Call 2020 and particularly well received by the EC evaluators, with a very high ranking. The application was submitted by Port of Antwerp (coordinator), Air Liquide, Fluxys and Total to carry out studies for a liquid CO2 Export Terminal within the Port of Antwerp.

Details: https://lnkd.in/dX4kA6n

++++SAVE THE DATE++++

VICTORIA International Virtual Conference:
Improving Video Analysis for a Safer Europe

16, 17, 18 November 2020 (online)

The EU-funded security project VICTORIA organises its International Virtual Conference from 16 to 18 November 2020. The aim of the research project, which started in May 2017, is to enhance the investigations of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) following crimes and terrorist acts through improved video analytic tools. To this end, the VICTORIA partners have developed an open, ethical, and legally compliant Video Analysis Platform (VAP) prototype which shall accelerate video analysis tasks while providing reliable results.

During the three-day conference, the VICTORIA consortium will present the project outputs after three years of intense research, including:

• Live demonstration of the VICTORIA Video Analysis Platform (VAP)
  along with the algorithms developed during the life of the project

• Highlights from the field trials of the VAP at LEA premises
  and feedback round with LEAs regarding their experiences with the tool

• Presentation of the technical challenges faced
  with a special focus on video- and audio data generation

• Introduction to the VICTORIA Video Analysis for Investigations (VAFI) community
  
  
• Open discussion on video analysis in the framework of EU norms & regulations

Parallel to the programme and upon registration, sessions will be organised by VICTORIA partners to individually demonstrate the VAP to LEAs. Additionally, coordinators of related H2020 security projects will have the opportunity present their project results and developed tools.

A preliminary programme is online at https://www.victoria-project.eu/final-conference/!

Project Website: https://www.victoria-project.eu/
LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/39k29Pk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/H2020Victoria

Today, the European innovation and funding consultancy ARTTIC SAS has launched ARTTIC Innovation GmbH in Germany. Carrying the comprehensive expertise of ARTTIC SAS and the PNO Group – of which ARTTIC is a subsidiary – ARTTIC Innovation GmbH is well equipped to serve the German market with innovation-related grants and consulting services.

Dedicated services for the German market

With the new company ARTTIC Innovation, we will be able to build on ARTTIC’s longstanding experience in proposal writing and project management, and establish a complementary new service offer around the R&D tax credit scheme (Forschungszulagengesetz) recently introduced in Germany. These new tax-based incentives will make R&D investments even more attractive in a country, in which investment in R&D is expected to rise up to 3.5% of the gross domestic product by 2025 and 170,000 full-time jobs to be created. ARTTIC has therefore decided to spin off ARTTIC Innovation, its new sister company fully focused on the German market.

Over 30 years of experience

ARTTIC Innovation assists innovation driven clients from all sectors, public and private of all sizes, in accessing innovation grants and in their full innovation life cycle. Martin Dietz, Director of ARTTIC Innovation: “Based on more than 30 years of experience at both PNO Consultants and ARTTIC as well as 14 years of operation in Germany as part of ARTTIC, the team of ARTTIC Innovation is very committed and ready to further advance the service offering to its clients and make their innovative ideas become projects and finally new products and services. This spin-off is a lever to drive growth and to continue to generate value for our clients”.

According to Paolo Salvatore, PNO Group Board Member and President of ARTTIC and ARTTIC Innovation, “ARTTIC Innovation GmbH will stay committed to delivering outstanding services to clients based in Germany, backed by ARTTIC’s successful experience and impressive track record of granted projects and best-in-class innovation support services that address the growing needs of our client base”.

About ARTTIC SAS

Just as ARTTIC Innovation GmbH, ARTTIC SAS is a subsidiary of PNO Group B.V. ARTTIC assists clients from all business and research sectors, small and large, private and public, to ensure the success of their collaborative research & innovation ventures. During close to 33 years of success, ARTTIC developed and demonstrated expertise in the set-up and management of to date 450 large-scale ambitious projects of which 111 successful under Horizon 2020 calls. Based on its long-standing experience in a range of funding programs across scientific and technological domains, ARTTIC helps clients to move from strategic plans to effective competitive research and development of innovative solutions, resulting in successful applications and businesses.

Contact

PRESSEMITTEILUNG

Ebner Stolz bietet mit ARTTIC Innovation GmbH ganzheitliche Forschungsfördermittelberatung an

• Steuerliche Forschungsförderung erfordert Beratungskompetenz auch im Beihilferecht
• Kooperation der Expertenteams von Ebner Stolz und ARTTIC Innovation GmbH
• Umfassende Beratung für maximale Beihilfe-Förderung

München, 15.06.2020 - Die steuerliche Forschungsförderung ist ein Novum in der Fördermittellandschaft. Damit sollen dringend erforderliche neue Anreize für Innovationen und Investitionen insbesondere bei kleineren und mittelständischen Unternehmen geschaffen werden. Daneben bestehen zahlreiche beihilferechtliche Regelungen. Insgesamt gilt es, die optimale Forschungsförderung in Höhe von bis zu 1 Mio. € auszuschöpfen.

Mit dem Forschungszulagengesetz tritt zu den bisher bestehenden Projektförderungen durch Bund, Länder oder die Europäische Union eine neue steuerliche Fördermöglichkeit. Unternehmen stehen vor der Herausforderung, die passgenaue Forschungsförderung für ihr konkretes Projekt zu identifizieren und dann zu beantragen.

Die Prüfungs- und Beratungsgesellschaft Ebner Stolz hat ein standortübergreifendes Expertenteam aus Wirtschaftsprüfern, Steuerberatern und Rechtsanwälten aufgebaut, das umfassend bei der neuen steuerlichen Fördermöglichkeit unterstützt. Um die Mandanten aber ganzheitlich bei der Inanspruchnahme von Fördermitteln zu beraten, kooperiert das Unternehmen mit Arttic Innovation GmbH, einem Unternehmen der PNO Consultants Gruppe.

PNO Consultants hat sich mit rund 400 Mitarbeitern in sieben EU-Mitgliedsstaaten zu einer der führenden Innovations- und Forschungsfördermittelberatungen in Europa entwickelt.  Seit 25 Jahren ist die PNO auf das Instrument der steuerlichen Forschungsförderung spezialisiert und profitiert vom Erfahrungswissen ihrer europäischen Niederlassungen bei der Einführung des neuen deutschen Instruments.

„Gemeinsam entwickeln wir für unsere Kunden und Mandanten passgenaue Lösungen im Zusammenhang mit der Einordnung der einzelnen Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprojekte unter beihilferechtlichen Aspekten und der Implementierung aller erforderlichen Maßnahmen, um die jeweilige Förderung zu erhalten,“ beschreibt Martin Theis, Wirtschaftsprüfer, Steuerberater und Partner bei Ebner Stolz in Bonn die Kooperation. „Bei den steuerlichen Hürden vertrauen wir ganz auf die Expertise von Ebner Stolz,“ freut sich Anne Baumgärtel. „Die Identifikation und Formulierung der antragsfähigen Forschungsprojekte sehen wir als unseren Fachbeitrag in dieser Kooperation.“

Pressekontakt

Verena von Scharfenberg
Mail: scharfenberg@arttic.eu

………………………………

Unternehmenskontakt

Anne Baumgärtel
Team Lead Forschungszulage
ARTTIC Innovation GmbH
Oskar-von-Miller-Ring 29
80333 München
Mail: info@fzulg.eu
Tel: 0049 (0) 89 248 83 03 51
Mobil: 0049 (0) 173 573 78 58
Homepage: fzulg.eu

Die PNO-Unternehmensgruppe ist eine der führenden Innovations- und Fördermittelberatungen in Europa. Heute hat die PNO-Gruppe rund 400 Mitarbeiter in sieben Ländern. Unsere Experten betreuen rund 5.000 Kunden aus Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft. In 2019 wurde ARTTIC SAS Teil der PNO Unternehmensgruppe. Die PNO Innovation GmbH, gegründet in 2020, repräsentiert einen Teil des inländischen Geschäftsbereichs der ARTTIC SAS bzw. der PNO Gruppe, insbesondere die Antragstellung zur Erlangung einer Bescheinigung nach § 6 FZulG.

While Covid-19 is unfolding the most serious healthcare crisis of the last 100 years in front of our eyes, all components of our economic infrastructure are at risk. The European Working Group of Innovation Consultants (EWGIC), which the PNO group is a member of, has therefore formulated a position paper to support the most fragile of these components: the SMEs. It calls on the European Commission to protect them, via the Horizon 2020 EIC Accelerator programme.

The position paper calls on the EU Parliament and Commission to take immediate action and work together with the Executive Agency for SMEs (EASME) in charge of administering the EIC Accelerator programme on an  “EIC Accelerator Airdrop” that offers liquidity to start-ups and innovative SMEs affected by the current crisis.

The position paper summarizes the most urgent problems to solve, with regards to the EIC Accelerator programme:

1. oversubscription will have serious adverse effects on the programme unless the effort is made to increase budgets or curb the number of submissions,
2. evaluation criteria must be clarified to ensure fair treatment of all proposals,
3. running EIC projects must be protected, with additional pre-financing and simplified periodic reporting and
4. it’s time for an EICAirdrop.

The EWGIC concluded: “The EIC programme is the ideal vehicle to quickly provide emergency funding to the best European deeptech start-ups, and prevent many unnecessary bankruptcies. However, using this tool properly requires swift and decisive action!”

Read the EWGIC position paper here and share it widely.

Statistics on the most recent EIC call applications

VICTORIA Final International Conference:
Improving Video Analysis for a Safer Europe

27-28 April 2020

Hotel Aston La Scala
12 avenue Félix Faure, 06000 Nice (France)

The European funded Security Project VICTORIA in association with the City of Nice in France is organising its Final International Conference on 27 and 28 April 2020. Launched in May 2017, the research project has aimed to enhance the investigations conducted by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) on crimes and terrorist acts thanks to improved video analytic tools. It is to this aim that the VICTORIA partners have designed and developed an open, ethical and legally compliant Video Analysis Platform (VAP) prototype in order to accelerate LEAs’ video analysis tasks in their day-to-day work.

The two-day Final Conference will be an opportunity for the VICTORIA consortium to present to up to 150 officials, LEAs and Developers the project’s outputs after three years of intensive research and development. Conference highlight will be the live demonstration of the VICTORIA open and flexible Video Analysis Platform (VAP), with LEA representatives sharing insights into their experiences while working with the tool during the field trials at their premises. The Conference agenda will also include an overview of related security projects and of VICTORIA legacy - as the “Video Analysis for Investigation” (VAFI) community – and a session reflecting on Video Analysis from the perspective of the EU Regulatory Framework.

“Video recordings are a major resource for legal investigations after crimes and terrorist acts yet, there is still a lack of mature video investigation tools which would help LEAs solve criminal cases faster and more efficiently”, says project coordinator Luc Sonke (IDEMIA Identity & Security). “I believe that with the VAP we have developed an unique platform which is not only designed to support analytic tools from third parties but which is also 100 percent ethical & legally compliant and which will therefore optimize LEAs everyday work in the future. I am looking forward to the VAP live demonstration to the public during the VICTORIA Final Conference and to use this event to come together as European security research community to collaboratively discuss the future of innovation and industry for security.”

Coordinators of related H2020 security projects will have the opportunity to give insights into their project results and developed tools during a 10-minute talk. The event’s “Exhibition Space”, a dedicated open market session, will offer further networking opportunities, while a dedicated exhibition space and poster session will more specifically showcase VICTORIA’s outputs. In addition, the winners of the VICTORIA Video Analytics Contest will be awarded, and the challengers will have an opportunity to present the best functionalities of their solution.

Parallel to the programme and exhibition, registration-based sessions will be organised to showcase the VAP to small groups of LEAs. A visit to the “Smart City Showroom” and the “City Urban Supervision Centre” will be organised too by a representative of the City of Nice.

For information, the Urban Supervision Centre of the City of Nice is the first video protection complex in France. More than 3,200 cameras are deployed throughout the city, operated from this Centre which is located in the heart of Nice. It is composed of 3 control rooms equipped with a total of 90 screens and a command room allowing about a hundred agents to take turns 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in order to carry out various missions such as the management of public events, the protection of schools and nurseries, transport security, etc...

AGENDA:
https://bit.ly/38Dlxpz

FREE REGISTRATION:
https://bit.ly/339MUX9

Project Website: https://www.victoria-project.eu/
Project Video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zpzDcOgyy0
LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/39k29Pk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/H2020Victoria

Event Organised in Association with:

Germany based companies and organizations can claim R&D project costs of up to 500.000 Euro per year for their research and development activities. This as a result of the German Research Allowance Act (German: Forschungszulage), that came into effect on 1 January 2020. The Forschungszulage was issued to stimulate German economy by a contribution to labour costs and eligible expenses and to upgrade Germany as a business location for innovative companies. In drafting this brand-new scheme, the German government studied similar programmes abroad, to be able to provide you with the best R&D tax allowance possible.

The Forschungszulage enables small and medium sized companies, start-ups, large corporations and (private) research organisations to receive allowance of up to 25 percent with a maximum yearly allowance sum of 500.000 Euros per applicant or applicant group. Research and development projects have to fulfil certain criteria to be eligible for the tax-based innovation allowance.

If you want to know whether your project(s) qualify for Forschungszulage or not, how to set up your innovation activities so that they do, don’t hesitate to get in touch and ask us. Use the contact form at www.fzulg.eu/en/ to get in touch with us.

ARTTIC was chosen to be the management partner of the H2020 HERoS project to improve efficiency of response to the Coronavirus outbreak.

The HERoS project which will soon start is led by Hanken and stands for "Health Emergency Response in Interconnected Systems". Hanken recently issued a press release:

”We at the HUMLOG Institute are very excited about this project and are looking forward to conducting research with immediate value to the incredible #HealthcareResponders and #HumanitarianOrganisations working with this right now. As always, research with a measurable benefit to people requiring assistance is at the core of any project we do”, says Gyöngyi Kovács professor and principal investigator for the research project. This excitment and pleasure to add to the corona virus mitigation is also on our part at ARTTIC. We are looking forward to collaborating with this great consortium.

The full press release can be found here on Hanken's website.

CANDY – Research project investigating the underlying mechanisms of co-morbidities in neurodevelopmental diseases and epilepsy has kicked-off

The European funded research project CANDY investigates the biological links between these neurodevelopmental disorders and co-occurring somatic illnesses and how treatment and monitoring of affected patients can be improved. The project has started on 1st of January 2020 and is coordinated by Radboud University (Medical Centre) in Nijmegen, Netherlands.

In Europe, 10-15% of children and adults or 50 to 75 million individuals are affected by neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), intellectual disability (ID), motor problems and language disorders.

It is not hard to imagine that one NDD alone can have a serious impact on a person’s life.  What makes the situation for the patient even worse is the fact that several NDDs often occur together and on top of that, go along with other somatic illnesses, such as epilepsy, (auto-)immune and gastrointestinal diseases, motor problems, and visual and auditory handicaps, whereby epilepsy is the most common co-occurring illness. This co-morbidity significantly affects a person’s length and quality of life and there are no effective treatments to date. The reason why some patients develop serious co-morbidities to the already existing NDD and others not, is still unclear.

This is where the EU-funded project CANDY (Comorbid Analysis of Neurodevelopmental Disorders and epilepsy) sets in. Recent insights into the mechanisms underpinning NDDs offer new opportunities to create a breakthrough. There is compelling evidence that many rare genetic variants increasing the risk for ASD, ADHD, and ID are shared and converge on relatively few final common pathways. Another important key role is likely played by immune dysregulation. CANDY’s innovation is to test, for the first time, if NDDs and their common mental and somatic multimorbidity, are caused by a combination of common and rare genetic variants and immune activation acting at different ‘sensitive periods’. Early maternal immune activation, in particular, is a shared environmental risk factor across NDDs, and this effect varies as a function of interactions between genetic and other environmental factors, such as nutrition and stress.

“Since we are able to map the entire human genome today, we have made tremendous progress in understanding the genetic basis of many diseases. However, there is never a one-to-one link between a single gene and a single illness”, says project coordinator Prof. Jan Buitelaar of Radboud University. “By looking at the mechanisms underpinning NDDs it is our aim to understand better the cause of co-morbidity of neurodevelopmental and somatic illnesses and to ultimately, find new strategies for prevention and treatment for affected patients.”

The multidisciplinary team of world leading academics, patient organizations and SMEs will cost-effectively leverage existing EU-funded studies (e.g. EU-AIMS, AIMS-2-TRIALS) to elucidate the mechanisms that underlie ASD, ADHD, ID, epilepsy and other somatic comorbidities, develop new strategies for prevention and treatment, deliver novel biomarkers for early diagnosis, stratification and monitoring and open-up new avenues for research in ASD, ADHD, ID, and epilepsy. Prof. Jan Buitelaar, coordinator of CANDY, concludes: “Together we will transform the landscape for people with NDDs and make possible personalized medicine approaches that target particular mechanisms, in specific subgroups of individuals and at different life stages.”

Sixteen partners of six EU-countries and Switzerland are closely collaborating in this international research programme, coordinated by Radboud University in the Netherlands. The academic project partners are King’s College London (UK), Institut Pasteur (France), Universität Basel (Switzerland), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (Netherlands), Universiteit Gent (Belgium), Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), Assistance Publique – Hopitaux de Paris (France), INSERM (France), Universität Ulm (Germany), Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (France) and Birkbeck College – University of London (UK). The consortium is completed by two patient organisations, namely ADD information services (UK) and Autism Europe (Belgium), the Dutch SME Noldus Information Technology BV and the French project management provider ARTTIC S.A.S..

As part of the "Horizon 2020" programme, the European Commission is funding the five-year CANDY research project with a total of six million Euro under grant agreement No. 847818.

Contact
CANDY project office
candy_arttic@eurtd.com

EVENT POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19.

Please click here to access the announcement for the new dates.

20. February 2020

Hope for Hepatitis B patients

New research project to cure hepatitis B patients under the European Horizon 2020 programme

On 1st January, 2020 a new research project in hepatitis B has started under the European Horizon 2020 programme. The main objective of the TherVacB project is to develop a therapeutic vaccine to cure hepatitis B patient

More than three percent of the world's population (about 260 million humans) are chronically infected with the hepatitis B virus (HBV). Worldwide 880,000 humans die each year from the sequelae: liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Currently, there is no cure. The therapeutic vaccine TherVacB aims to cure patients with chronic hepatitis B. A consortium of leading virologists, immunologists and specialized physicians will use a newly designed vaccine as an immunotherapy in a two-year clinical trial starting in 2021. With three vaccine shots, one every four weeks, the vaccine induces neutralizing antibodies and T-cell responses. At first, two protein antigens are injected, followed by an MVA (“modified vaccinia virus Ankara”) vector. This vector is designed to express hepatitis B viruses found worldwide. Since Africa suffers from a high infection rate and particular HBV viruses can be found there, part of the clinical trial will be conducted in Tanzania. This shall also help building local capacities for diagnosing and treating hepatitis B. 

Project coordinator Prof. Ulrike Protzer on the benefits of the project: "I am highly pleased that for the clinical trials of TherVacB we are able to cooperate with a consortium of Europe’s leading virologists, immunologists and hepatologist, guided by Helmholtz Zentrum München. This will be of great benefit for the patients chronically infected with the hepatitis B virus."

ARTTIC has supported the proposal development and is now supporting the project’s day-to-day management, communication, dissemination and exploitation activities. “I am very happy about the successful proposal we could develop together with the consortium and we are excited to be partner of this important research project”, Dr. Claudia Speiser, Senior Consultant at ARTTIC states. “With our long-standing experience in EU research project management, we will support the TherVacB consortium to deliver and disseminate the targeted results and achieve the expected impact.”

TherVacB is supported by H2020 with 10.426.000 million Euros. The project runs over five years and will end on 31 December, 2024.

The parties involved

The TherVacB project is coordinated by Helmholtz Zentrum München and unites public research organisations from across Europe: Klinikum Rechts der Isar der Technischen Universität München, Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf, Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Infektionsforschung GmbH, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Universität Leipzig, Technische Universität München (Germany); National Institute for Medical Research (Tanzania); Fundacio Clinic per a la Recerca Biomedica (Spain); Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Parma (Italy); University College London, Barts and the London NHS Trust, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (United Kingdom), supported by Biotechnology related enterprise members CTC North GmbH & Co. KG (Germany) and ARTTIC (France).

About Horizon 2020 Programme

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly 80 billion Euros of funding available over seven years (2014 to 2020). It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market. The project is funded in a specific call about innovative treatments and technologies such as gene or cell therapies. With this specific call the European Union aims to improve the development of advanced methods and devices for targeted and controlled delivery, and to bring these innovative treatments to the patient.

About ARTTIC

ARTTIC assists clients from all business and research sectors, small and large, private and public, to ensure the success of their collaborative research & innovation ventures. During 32 years of success, ARTTIC developed and demonstrated expertise in the set-up and management of to date 400 large-scale ambitious projects of which 96 already successful under H2020 first calls, Clean Sky calls included. Based on its long-standing experience in a range of funding programmes across scientific and technological domains, ARTTIC helps clients to move from strategic plans to effective competitive research and development of innovative solutions, resulting in successful applications and businesses. Founded in Paris in 1987, ARTTIC is now a group of companies with main offices in France (Paris and Toulouse), Belgium (Brussels), Germany (Munich and Berlin), England (Derby) and Israel (Tel Aviv).

Contact
Project Office
Email us: thervacb_management@eurtd.com

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 848223.

International Symposium
“Precision Medicine in Autoimmune Disease”

Date : 6^th March 2020
Time: 8.30 a.m. – 18.30 p.m. (CET)
Place: Sky Lounge
Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1
1090 Vienna, Austria

EU funded project RELENT organises the International Symposium “Precision Medicine in Autoimmune Disease”.

RELENT (RELapses prevENTion in chronic autoimmune disease: common mechanisms and co-morbidities) will host a symposium in Vienna on March 6, 2020 to share the results of its research. The Horizon 2020 funded project was designed to develop individualised treatment for chronic autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and vasculitis, that cause considerable mortality and morbidity, both from uncontrolled disease and treatment-associated co-morbidities like infection and malignancy.

Started in 2015, the RELENT Consortium is led by the Medical University of Vienna and has brought together a multidisciplinary group of scientists and clinical investigators from different EU and Non-EU countries. The project co-ordinator, Professor Renate Kain, said “Excellent collaborative work over the past 5 years has resulted in major achievements, highlights of which will be presented at an open International Symposium to be held in Vienna on the 6^th March 2020”. The novel findings generated by the RELENT Consortium have important implications for better and more precise treatment of chronic autoimmune disease. They need to be widely known both by fellow investigators and the public at large, because of the their implications for the development of future EU health research and medical technologies.

The International Symposium is open to the general public and its participation is free of charge. The program includes presentations by RELENT Partners and Keynote Lectures by invited keynote speakers. The Symposium should stimulate discussion and ideas between all interested parties, including basic and clinical scientists, industry partners, stakeholders such as patients, students and the media / press. The participants will have the opportunity, following agreement with the organisation team, to display a flyer, poster or roll-up that is in line with the project’s topic.

We would like to invite all interested to register here for his/her participation in the event or to contact the organisation team at relent_arttic@eurtd.com for any query.

Programme - Friday, March 6^th 2020 – Sky Lounge

The H2020 VICTORIA Security Project is organising its Video Analytics challenge from 02/12/2019 till 28/02/2020 (New Date!)

Audio/video analysis developers are invited to test and benchmark their algorithms and furthermore to develop the necessary plug-ins for these to communicate with the open Video Analysis Platform (VAP) on VICTORIA datasets.

More information on the Press Release at the following link.

The H2020 VICTORIA Security Project is organising its Video Analytics challenge from 02/12/2019 till 28/02/2020.

Audio/video analysis technology developers/providers/researchers are invited to test and benchmark their algorithms and furthermore to develop the necessary plug-ins for these to communicate with the open Video Analysis Platform (VAP) on VICTORIA datasets.

The VAP is an open and flexible platform designed to support analytic tools from third parties with varied features. This new platform is available in a cloud server during the challenge for testing and integration.

Prizes will reward best challengers: first plugins successfully integrated into the VAP, most innovative algorithms, best algorithms scores on dedicated challenges (persons/cars detection and tracking, audio detection)… A special prize will reward challengers of several challenges, mostly including plugin integration.

More information on https://cmt.eurtd.com/events/event/view/220180/victoria-analytics-contest-event

Congratulations to Coordinator Guillaume Sannie of CEA & the H2020 C-BORD project team who have been awarded the "Etoile de l'Europe" prize by the Ministère de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche (France) yesterday!

The 11 2019 winners were selected for the scientific quality and international dimension of their project. The C-BORD project developed a toolbox and framework for effective container inspection at border control points. ARTTIC is proud to have contributed to this through C-BORD development & project management!

More information on C-BORD on https://www.cbord-h2020.eu/

The EPICEA project, coordinated by ONERA and with ARTTIC as partner, has been featured in the new edition of the Results Pack on aviation safety, which introduces six H2020-funded projects that will help make EU skies the safest: https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/401449-cordis-results-pack-on-safer-aviation/en.

Bonn, 2 October 2019

A new European research initiative will develop innovative ways of detecting victims trapped under debris

In the face of natural or man-made disaster, urban search and rescue teams and other first responders like police, medical units or civil protection race against the clock to locate survivors within the critical 72-hour timeframe, often at their own peril due to the presence of instable structures or hazardous environments. In order to speed up the detection of survivors trapped in collapsed buildings and to improve working conditions for the first responders, the CURSOR project will devise novel technologies using drones, miniaturized robotic equipment and advanced sensors.

The project will most notably deliver the innovative CURSOR Search and Rescue Kit, which features miniaturized robots and different types of drones. The robots are equipped with chemical sensors that detect a wide range of chemical substances indicating human presence. They are carried from the operations headquarters to the disaster site by a transport drone. On site, the robots work independently in clusters searching for survivors. Additionally, the Mothership UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) acts as an aerial hub that produces high-definition imaging for accurate visualization of the disaster zone and allows communication with the control centre.

The initiative ultimately seeks to match the operational needs of search and rescue teams with current technological capabilities. In order to achieve this objective, the CURSOR team, which includes 16 partners*, involves first-response practitioners from four European countries; research organisations that will provide leading-edge technology; and small and medium companies that will develop key innovative components and commercialize the project results. Other relief practitioners will be involved as members of the project’s First Responder Board, responsible for technology validation and standardisation activities.

“First responders have practical experience on the field and developers the technical know-how,” explains Klaus Dieter Büttgen, coordinator of the CURSOR project at the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW). “Through this unique collaboration between technical partners, industry, academics and first responders, expertise will be transformed into a novel technology that contributes to locating buried victims more swiftly and with less risk for the people conducting the research operation.”

The European Commission granted EUR 7 million to the CURSOR research proposal under the Horizon 2020 funding scheme. The project was officially launched in September and will run for three years.

NOTES TO THE EDITOR

Consortium partners

Practitioners
Technisches Hilfswerk - Bundesministerium des Innern, Germany
Entente pour la Forêt Méditerranéenne, France
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority, United Kingdom
Service Départemental d’Incendie et de Secours de la Savoie, France
Hellenic Rescue Team ATTICA, Greece

Small-to-medium enterprises
EXODUS SA, Greece
C4CONTROLS, United Kingdom
International Security Competence Centre GmbH, Austria
Trilateral Research Ltd, Ireland
ARTTIC S.A.S., France (Project office)

Research
Tohoku University, Japan
Institute of Communications and Computer Systems, Greece
SINTEF AS, Norway
Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, France
The University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Not-for-profit organisation
German Institute for Standardisation, Germany

Members of the First Responder Board: International Search and Rescue Advisory Group, Regione Liguria, USAR.NL, USAR US, National Research Institute of Fire and Disaster (Japan)

Project duration: 01/09/2019 – 30/08/2022

EU financial contribution: 6 999 822,50€
RIA - Research and Innovation action
Program: H2020-EU.3.7.5. - Increase Europe's resilience to crises and disasters
Topic: SU-DRS02-2018-2019-2020 - Technologies for first responders

Media enquiries:
Project Office: Claudia Speiser, ARTTIC, +49 89 248 83 03 16, speiser(at)arttic.eu
Project Coordinator: Klaus Dieter Büttgen, Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), +49 22 8940 1124 klaus-dieter.buettgen(at)thw.de

The SHUTTLE consortium will organise its First Public Workshop on the 30^th of October 2019. This workshop will be co-organised with the large joint event entitled Mediterranean Security Event (MSE) 2019 scheduled on the 29^th, 30^th and 31^st of October 2019 in Heraklion, Crete. This will be a unique opportunity to participate in the activities of the SHUTTLE project and to get informed regarding its Call for Tender launched on the 20^th of September. Below you may find the draft agenda of the SHUTTLE workshop.

SHUTTLE First Public Workshop, 30th October 2019 (Half day)
-----------------------------------
SHUTTLE introduction
--------------------------------------
Discussion towards Industrials
Call for tender/PCP process
Toolkit requirements
--------------------------------------
Discussion towards End-users
Future applications
Path to Standardization

Please contact us if you wish to participate in the SHUTTLE workshop!

If you wish also to participate in the MSE 2019, please refer to the website of MSE: https://mse2019.kemea-research.gr/.

This SHUTTLE Call  for Tenders invites all interested parties to present their offers to develop a cost-effective, open machine integrating a rich toolkit for automated trace evidence analysis to provide scientific evidence in a high-throughput manner.

The Deadline to submit a proposal is the 2Oth of November 2019, 12:00 pm EET.

The Tender Pack contains all Tender documents needed for preparing and submitting your tender

Download the TENDER PACK from the SHUTTLE website

If you have any problem with the downloading, please contact the SHUTTLE project team.

Continuous Q&A will be published during the tendering period at www.shuttle-pcp.eu

New SESAR project aims to make aircraft movement on the airport surface safer and more efficient

On time, resilient and seamless traffic in European airspace requires a modernized air transport system. In connection with the SESAR 2020 research project Integrated Airport Operations, the Airspace User Demonstration AUDIO (Airspace User supporting Demonstration of Integrated Airport Operations) has been launched. The demonstration project, funded by the European Union, aims to improve safety, efficiency and predictability of flights by increasing the flight crew’s situational awareness while the aircraft is taxiing.

In the next 20 years, the frequency of air travel for the average citizen will increase by one to two percent per year in developed countries, according to a recent IATA forecast. This means new challenges for airports and pilots, who will have to manage increased congestion whilst maintaining safety.

To ensure timely arrivals and smooth baggage claims, but also to improve environmental performance by reducing fuel consumption, Europe’s Air Traffic Management (ATM) system needs constant updates. Steffen Loth, coordinator of the newly launched AUDIO (Airspace User supporting Demonstration of Integrated Airport Operations) project at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), explains: "Promising new solutions for airport operators and air navigation service providers are almost ready for deployment at European airports. Pre-operational trials have shown safety and efficiency benefits of these new solutions. For an integrated approach to a modernized air transport, we need to go beyond these ground-based solutions, involve airlines as central partners and share available information between all stakeholders."

Providing additional information to the cockpit

Cockpit crews currently have access to information such as the digital layout of airports or a graphical representation of their own position through what is called the Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) System. AUDIO proposes to provide additional data, traditionally available to controllers only.

In a real-life demonstration at Hamburg airport, AUDIO will demonstrate the viability of an innovative advanced and connected moving map application, developed under a previous EU funded project. The application provides the cockpit with local airport data such as the on-ground traffic situation and planned taxi routes.

Safer planning, more fluidity, less stress

Equipped with this additional information, on-board operations are expected to run smoother as crews are aware of the planned ground trajectory and the surrounding complex environment. This also allows them to react more easily to
last-minute re-planning of routes once the aircraft is off-block. The results: a safer sequence, a more reliable targeted take-off time, less complexity for the crew, more efficient taxiing and fewer emissions due to lower fuel consumption.

AUDIO will also make sure that this innovative application is easily accepted by pilots, airlines, manufacturers and other stakeholders in the ATM community and prepare its market uptake.

Four experienced European partners join forces in AUDIO

AUDIO is coordinated by DLR, which provides ground information, flight plan and route information collected by the Airport Research and Innovation platform (ARIF) in Hamburg, Germany. Deutsche Lufthansa will adapt the existing EFB solutions, oversee the demonstration at Hamburg Airport and evaluate them under real-life conditions. Norway-based SINTEF provides the SESAR solutions to be used for the demonstration. French management consultancy ARTTIC will ensure the dissemination of the project’s results and achievements.

AUDIO is funded under the SESAR 2020 programme through a specific call within the European Union's Horizon 2020 framework programme for Research & Innovation, specifically aiming to modernize the air traffic management system. A total of 1.06 million Euros has been awarded to the consortium to run the project over two years.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

About SESAR 2020 Research and Innovation Programme

SESAR 2020 is an innovative programme for researching the future of air traffic management in Europe. It builds on its predecessor, SESAR 1, to deliver high-performing operational and technological solutions for uptake by the aviation industry. With a budget of 1.6 billion between now and 2024, SESAR 2020 will support projects to deliver solutions in four key areas, namely: airport operations, network operations, air traffic services, technology enablers.

As the technological pillar of the Single European Sky initiative, SESAR aims to modernise and harmonise air traffic management in Europe. The SESAR Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU) was established in 2007 as a public-private partnership to support this endeavour. It does so by pooling the knowledge and resources of the entire ATM community in order to define, research, develop and validate innovative technological and operational solutions. Founded by the European Union and Eurocontrol, the SESAR JU has 19 members, who together with their partners and affiliate associations will represent over 100 companies working in Europe and beyond.

______________________________________________________________________________

Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is the national aeronautics and space research centre of the Federal Republic of Germany. Its extensive research and development work in aeronautics, space, energy, transport, security and digitalisation is integrated into national and international cooperative ventures. In addition to its own research, as Germany’s space agency, DLR has been given responsibility by the federal government for the planning and implementation of the German space programme. DLR is also the umbrella organisation for one of the nation’s largest project management agencies.

DLR has approximately 8,000 employees at 20 locations in Germany: Cologne (headquarters), Augsburg, Berlin, Bonn, Braunschweig, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Dresden, Goettingen, Hamburg, Jena, Juelich, Lampoldshausen, Neustrelitz, Oberpfaffenhofen, Oldenburg, Stade, Stuttgart, Trauen, and Weilheim. DLR also has offices in Brussels, Paris, Tokyo and Washington D.C. www.DLR.de

Deutsche Lufthansa Aktiengesellschaft

Deutsche Lufthansa Aktiengesellschaft (Deutsche Lufthansa AG) is one of the world’s leading aviation groups. Its portfolio of companies consists of hub airlines, point-to point airlines and aviation service companies. Its combination of business segments makes the Lufthansa Group a globally unique aviation group. Lufthansa Group is a global aviation group with a total of 540 subsidiaries and equity investments, which in the financial year 2015 were organised into the Passenger Airline Group, Logistics, MRO, Catering and Other business segments. All the segments occupy a leading position in their respective markets. In 2015, the Lufthansa Group generated revenue of EUR 32.1bn and employed an average of 119,559 staff. www.lufthansagroup.com

SINTEF AS

SINTEF is the largest independent research organization in Scandinavia. It is participating in the SESAR 2020 programme through the consortium NATMIG, which it also coordinates. Having gained competence in state-of-the-art ATM research for several decades, the increased focus through the SESAR 1 and SESAR 2020 involvement has substantially improved SINTEFs technology and aligned it further to the needs of the aviation industry and airspace users. The activity in SESAR has also increased SINTEFs aeronautical research portfolio outside SESAR. SINTEF is a multidisciplinary research foundation, bringing know-how and ideas to ATM domain through its state-of-the-art research in other domains like Oil & Gas, Space, Health & Medicine, Constructions, Energy, Marine, Railway, Roads, and Resilience. www.SINTEF.no

ARTTIC

ARTTIC assists clients from all business and research sectors, small and large, private and public, to ensure the success of their collaborative research & innovation ventures. During close to 32 years of success, ARTTIC developed and demonstrated expertise in the set-up and management of to date 400 large-scale ambitious projects of which 96 were successful under H2020 calls. Based on its long-standing experience in a range of funding programmes across scientific and technological domains, ARTTIC helps clients to move from strategic plans to effective competitive research and development of innovative solutions, resulting in successful applications and businesses. ARTTIC is a company of the PNO Consultants group, the European leader for consultancy in innovation and funding. www.arttic.eu

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This project has received funding from the SESAR Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 783161.

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Partner logos

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Press contact
Teresa Gross
ARTTIC
Research Communication Manager
audio-communication@eurtd.com
+49 89 248 830 348

Scientific contact
Steffen Loth
German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Institute for Flight Guidance
steffen.loth@dlr.de
+49 531 295 2811

Twitter: @AUDIO_projectEU
LinkedIn: AUDIO project

Putting procurement experts at the heart of security innovation

Numerous innovative security solutions never make it to market. The EU funded iProcureNet project sets out to change this by mobilising a sometimes overlooked expert group.

Sovereign Clouds, Blockchains, Urban Security, Cybersecurity: novel technologies and new societal challenges are constantly transforming our security sector. But Europe is still struggling to ensure the market uptake of many innovative security solutions – despite the production of high-quality novel technologies and knowledge all over the continent. This gap is further widened by the specific character of the security market: fast-changing, driven almost entirely through national, and sometimes regional and local, legislation and standards, and often subject to constrained budgets.
This is where procurers come in: They are at the steering wheel – shaping the security market and enabling it to respond to ever new challenges.

 Joining forces among European security procurers
iProcureNet, launched in May 2019, is a new practitioners’ network based on this principle. Fifteen partners from eleven European countries including France, Estonia, Spain, Cyprus, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Romania and Bulgaria, have joined forces.
The initiative, funded by the European Commission, aims to build an ecosystem of experts in all different areas of security procurement – procurers, prescribers, legal and innovation experts, and academics. Jean-Michel Riaux, Director of Security Procurement at the French Ministry of Interior, is "delighted" to be a part of this initiative. "iProcureNet will stimulate dialogue and ultimately even facilitate cross-border joint procurement," explains Riaux.

Procurement as a catalyst for innovation
Security procurer Marine Thevenin is coordinating the initiative on behalf of the French Ministry of Interior. She is convinced: "Procurers must become part of the innovation cycle. They need to learn how to manage their procurement processes in a way that encourages suppliers to innovate. iProcureNet will fill this gap." The result – the security technology industry and researchers will be stimulated into action and the gap between research and the market will be diminished.
On the other hand, the joint procurement of security solutions will not only optimise cost. It will also help find common answers to common societal challenges and replace the current fragmented security market by a common European market.

An ecosystem for European procurement experts
During the next five years, the project will support procurers as they move towards this joint procurement of innovative solutions. Nikolai Stoianov, Deputy Director of the Bulgarian Defence Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria, lays out the iProcureNet strategy: "Based on the joint expertise of European procurement experts, we will map and analyse the general EU procurement environment, including national investment strategies, innovation needs, security markets, and obstacles to cross-border collaboration. In the end, we will have a clear idea of security procurement practices all over the EU and reach a common understanding of innovation in this sector."
iProcureNet will initially focus on three topics: the fight against crime and terrorism, border and external security, and disaster and resilient societies.

A service package for security procurers
The initiative will set up an online platform to allow the iProcureNet community to connect and exchange. Each Spring, iProcureNet will organise a public conference that will disseminate its key findings and provide an excellent opportunity to engage with other European security procurement stakeholders.
Furthermore, iProcureNet will issue and regularly update a toolbox for the joint procurement of security solutions, designed not only for public agencies, but also for private and NGO procurers.
And because procurement is crucial for any stakeholder involved in important security questions, iProcureNet will seek close collaboration with a variety of stakeholders, including Law Enforcement Agencies, NGOs, other European projects, and policy makers. European security procurers are all set to become a driving force for innovation.

 For more information on the project or on how to join the iProcureNet community, contact us:
Project contact: Marine Thevenin, Coordinator, French Ministry of Interior
Press contact: Christiane Abele, ARTTIC - abele@arttic.eu

www.iprocurenet.eu
Twitter: @iprocurenet_EU
LinkedIn: /iProcureNet

The SHUTTLE PCP project will launch its call for tender to support the development of a Scientific High-throughput and Unified Toolkit for Trace analysis by forensic Laboratories in Europe on the 20^th September 2019.

Awarded Phase 1 organisations will get contracts up to EUR 240,000.00 each.

To learn more about the PCP tender and access the tender documents on the 20^th of September, please visit https://www.shuttle-pcp.eu/pre-commercial-procurement/

The VICTORIA Project Video Trailer is now available and can be found on the project website at https://www.victoria-project.eu/

Video material collected and analysed by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) has become a critical component in legal investigations following major criminal acts and terrorist attacks.

There is hence an urgent need for efficient tools that can assist the LEAs in their daily video investigation tasks, to help them process the huge volume of video materials with less effort, and find clues and evidences faster. The core technology for such tools is video analytics modules. Analytics modules accompanied by a 4D Crime scene reconstruction and advanced metadata querying mechanism can enable investigators to easily navigate through a vast amount of video materials and strengthen the Law Enforcement Agencies capabilities when doing their job

The 3-year H2020 European project VICTORIA, launched on 1 May 2017, is addressing this need and is developing an ethical and legally compliant video analysis platform (VAP) accelerating the video analysis tasks of Law Enforcement Agencies.

Around 50 million people worldwide suffer from epilepsy, making it one of the most common neurological diseases. To decrease this figure and pave the way for future ground-breaking epilepsy research, seven large EU-funded projects joined forces in May 2018 in Brussels, Belgium, in a unique community-building event – the epiXchange conference. Designed to gather a critical mass of epilepsy researchers and stakeholders, the conference became a forum for exchange and discussions on latest research results and future research policies.

The epiXchange cluster has now published an article in Epilepsia, presenting major achievements by the cluster in the areas of biomarkers, genetics, therapeutics, comorbidities and biobanks as well as recommendations for future research to develop and bring novel solutions to the patients. To read the article, click here.

More information about the epiXchange event can be found here.

Solar fuel breakthrough
SUN-to-LIQUID produces solar kerosene from sunlight, water and CO₂

The transition from fossil to renewable fuels is one of the most important challenges of the future. The SUN-to-LIQUID project takes on this challenge by producing renewable transportation fuels from water and CO₂ with concentrated sunlight: The project, which is funded by the EU and Switzerland, now succeeded to demonstrate the first synthesis of solar kerosene. “The SUN-to-LIQUID core solar technology and the integrated chemical plant were experimentally validated under real field conditions relevant to industrial implementation”, said Prof. Aldo Steinfeld of ETH Zurich, who leads the solar thermochemical reactor development. “This technological demonstration can have important implications for the transportation sectors, especially for the long-haul aviation and shipping sectors which are strongly dependent on drop-in hydrocarbon fuels”, announced project coordinator Dr Andreas Sizmann of Bauhaus Luftfahrt, “we are now a step closer to living on a renewable ‘energy income’ instead of burning our fossil ‘energy heritage’. This is a necessary step to protect our environment.”

From the laboratory to the field

The preceding EU-project SOLAR-JET developed the technology and achieved the first-ever production of solar jet fuel in a laboratory environment. The SUN-to-LIQUID project scaled up this technology for on-sun testing at a solar tower. For that purpose, a unique solar concentrating plant was built at the IMDEA Energy Institute in Móstoles, Spain. “A sun-tracking field of heliostats concentrates sunlight by a factor of 2,500 – three times higher than current solar tower plants used for electricity generation” explains Dr Manuel Romero of IMDEA Energy. This intense solar flux, verified by the flux measurement system developed by project partner DLR, allows to reach reaction temperatures of more than 1,500°C within the solar reactor positioned at the top of the tower. The solar reactor, developed by project partner ETH Zurich, produces synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, from water and CO₂ via a thermochemical redox cycle. An on-site gas-to-liquid plant that was developed by the project partner HyGear processes this gas to kerosene.

Unlimited supply of sustainable fuel

Compared to conventional fossil-derived jet fuel, the net CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere can be reduced by more than 90%. Furthermore, since the solar energy-driven process relies on abundant feedstock and does not compete with food production, it can thus meet the future fuel demand at the global scale without the need to replace the existing worldwide infrastructure for fuel distribution, storage, and utilization.  

Project background

SUN-to-LIQUID is a four-year project supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). It started in January 2016 and will end on 31 December 2019. SUN-to-LIQUID joins leading European research organizations and companies in the field of solar thermochemical fuel research, namely ETH Zurich, IMDEA Energy, DLR, Abengoa and HyGear Technology & Services B.V. The coordinator Bauhaus Luftfahrt e.V. is also responsible for technology and system analyses. ARTTIC supports the Research Consortium with project management and communication.

For more information, visit https://www.sun-to-liquid.eu/.
Project video
Project flyer
Photo in high resolution

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Bauhaus Luftfahrt (project coordinator)

Bauhaus Luftfahrt is an interdisciplinary research institution funded by the four aerospace companies Airbus Group, Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft (IABG), Liebherr-Aerospace and MTU Aero Engines as well as grants of the Bavarian Ministry for Economic Affairs, Media, Energy and Technology. The non-profit association is an internationally-oriented think tank. The team of around 50 employees deals with the future of mobility in general and with the future of air travel in particular. The goal of the research work is to consider the complex system of aviation from different points of view. In every project, the technical, economic, social and ecological aspects are considered holistically. www.bauhaus-luftfahrt.net 

Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is the national aeronautics and space research centre of the Federal Republic of Germany. Its extensive research and development work in aeronautics, space, energy, transport, security and digitalisation is integrated into national and international cooperative ventures. In addition to its own research, as Germany’s space agency, DLR has been given responsibility by the federal government for the planning and implementation of the German space programme. DLR is also the umbrella organisation for one of the nation’s largest project management agencies.

DLR has approximately 8,000 employees at 20 locations in Germany: Cologne (headquarters), Augsburg, Berlin, Bonn, Braunschweig, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Dresden, Goettingen, Hamburg, Jena, Juelich, Lampoldshausen, Neustrelitz, Oberpfaffenhofen, Oldenburg, Stade, Stuttgart, Trauen, and Weilheim. DLR also has offices in Brussels, Paris, Tokyo and Washington D.C. www.DLR.de

ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich)

Freedom and individual responsibility, entrepreneurial spirit and open-mindedness: ETH Zurich stands on a bedrock of true Swiss values. Our university for science and technology dates back to the year 1855, when the founders of modern-day Switzerland created it as a centre of innovation and knowledge. Some 530 professors teach around 21,400 students – including nearly 4,200 doctoral students – from over 120 countries. Their collective research embraces many disciplines: natural sciences and engineering sciences, architecture, mathematics, system-oriented natural sciences, as well as management and social sciences. The results and innovations produced by ETH researchers are channelled into some of Switzerland’s most high-tech sectors: from computer science through to micro- and nanotechnology and cutting-edge medicine. Every year ETH registers around 100 patents and 200 inventions on average. Since 1996, the university has produced a total of 407 commercial spin-offs. ETH also has an excellent reputation in scientific circles: 21 Nobel laureates have studied, taught or researched here, and in international league tables ETH Zurich regularly ranks as one of the world’s top universities. www.ethz.ch

IMDEA Energy Institute

The IMDEA Energy Foundation was created in November of 2006 by the regional government of Comunidad de Madrid with the aim to promote energy-related R&D activities. The ultimate goal of the Foundation is to achieve and transfer outstanding scientific and technological results that could contribute to the development of a sustainable energy system, establishing strong links with the main companies in the energy sector. The research, development and innovation activities developed at IMDEA Energy are within the scope of renewable energy and clean energy technologies. The Institute at present focuses on the production of sustainable fuels; solar energy advanced technologies; energy storage; smart management of electricity demand; energy saving and the confinement and valorization of CO₂ emissions. The research on solar energy has as main objective the development of modular, efficient, dispatchable and cost-effective high temperature solar concentrating technologies for power generation, industrial process heat and production of solar fuels and chemicals. www.energy.imdea.org  

Abengoa

Abengoa is an international company that applies innovative technology solutions for sustainable development in the infrastructures, energy and water sectors.

Abengoa has extensive experience in engineering, construction, assembly and commissioning of power generation plants with open cycle technologies, combined cycles, cogeneration, wind farms, solar thermal and photovoltaic plants, and biomass plants that together exceed 12,800 MW installed capacity. Abengoa is carrying out turnkey projects in all these areas that encompass the entire value-chain: development, engineering, purchasing, construction, plant commissioning, in addition to offering operation and maintenance. Abengoa has its own solar thermal technology and has become a world leader in the construction of solar thermal plants, with 34% of the installed capacity worldwide. Technological development continues to be Abengoa’s key competitive advantage in the undertaking of

high added value projects. The company continues to develop R&D and Innovation projects, which improve both the performance of current products and services and the acquisition of new skills. Till 2018, the accumulated investment in R&D has reached more than 800 M€ and 342 granted patents.  www.abengoa.es

HyGear

HyGear Technology & Services B.V. is a SME based in Arnhem, The Netherlands, with focus on development and manufacturing of small-scale gas processing plants and purification systems. The company has developed proprietary technologies for on-site hydrogen generators (Hy.GEN), and gas purification systems (Hy.REC) for industrial applications. HyGear offers these systems commercially within its Gas-as-a-Service contracts to supply cost effective on-site produced gases like hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. It is HyGear’s mission is to move more small-scale chemical plants to market entry. Several new technologies development like small scale Gas-to-Liquid units and ultra-purification of gases (Gas.PURE) are under way. www.hygear.com   

ARTTIC

ARTTIC assists clients from all business and research sectors, small and large, private and public, to ensure the success of their collaborative research & innovation ventures. During close to 32 years of success, ARTTIC developed and demonstrated expertise in the set-up and management of to date 400 large-scale ambitious projects of which 96 were successful under H2020 calls. Based on its long-standing experience in a range of funding programmes across scientific and technological domains, ARTTIC helps clients to move from strategic plans to effective competitive research and development of innovative solutions, resulting in successful applications and businesses. ARTTIC is a company of the PNO Consultants group, the European leader for consultancy in innovation and funding. www.arttic.eu

Our contacts

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 654408.
The activities performed by the partner ETH Zürich have been supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) under contract No 150330.

European innovation and grants consultancies PNO Consultants and ARTTIC have joined forces. The two companies will enable each other to optimize their service delivery in both quality and quantity. Together, the combination consolidates a strong presence in Europe.

A perfect match in expertise and network

PNO and ARTTIC complement each other in multiple ways. ARTTIC has developed extensive knowledge and experience in coordinating and participating in large-scale EU-funded collaborative projects. With a strong base in France and Germany and a leading position in the high-tech sectors aerospace and security, the company fits perfectly with PNO Consultants – the latter being a seasoned network-oriented consultancy organization with a wide spectrum of services in the field of grants, innovation and compliance and a strong position in the sectors life sciences & health and energy, climate & environment.

Serving our clients even better in realizing their innovation ambitions

According to Paolo Salvatore, PNO board member, ARTTIC’s long-standing experience in research and innovation ventures is a valuable incentive for PNO’s constant pursuit of serving its clients optimally. “ARTTIC’s strengths rely on its focus on collaborative R&D projects, its specialization in the full cycle of project implementation and its leading position in the security and aerospace sectors. Our combined expertise, geographical coverage and broad spectrum of services enable us to better meet the increasing market demand for an extensive range of grants and consulting services. We can now serve our clients even better in realizing their innovation ambitions.”

Excited and impatient

Annette Ringwald, managing director at ARTTIC, is convinced that PNO and ARTTIC will truly inspire each other. “I am very happy about the new PNO and ARTTIC combination, since I really think both parties complement each other in expertise and portfolio, to the benefit of our clients. During the preceding talks I noticed a real mutual understanding about our markets and strategy, which I found very inspiring indeed. Being able to further expand our brands and at the same time take advantage of each other’s knowledge and strengths, makes me feel excited and even a bit impatient to see what we can achieve together.”

Building on strong brands

Over the last 30+ years, both ARTTIC and PNO have acquired a robust and independent position in the European market for grants and innovation consultancy. While optimally utilizing the synergistic benefits, the combination will further expand its position based on both strong brands.

About PNO

PNO was founded in 1985. With offices in Belgium (Brussels and Zaventem), France (Paris), Germany (Düsseldorf and Leipzig), Italy (Bologna and Roma), the Netherlands (Den Haag and Eindhoven), Spain (Barcelona) and the United Kingdom (Manchester), PNO has a solid base to offer its grants, innovation and compliance services to clients from all over Europe and beyond. PNO Consultants contribute to large-scale changes by assisting more than 2,000 organisations and 4,000 research clients and partners yearly. Its stable network connects stakeholders from different sectors, domains and countries, including academic organisations, research institutes, SMEs and large industries. PNO offers a wide spectrum of services in the field of grants, innovation and compliance and holds a strong position in the sectors life sciences & health and energy, climate & environment.

About ARTTIC

ARTTIC assists clients from all business and research sectors, small and large, private and public, to ensure the success of their collaborative research & innovation ventures. During close to 32 years of success, ARTTIC developed and demonstrated expertise in the set-up and management of to date 400 large-scale ambitious projects of which 96 were successful under H2020 calls. Based on its long-standing experience in a range of funding programmes across scientific and technological domains, ARTTIC helps clients to move from strategic plans to effective competitive research and development of innovative solutions, resulting in successful applications and businesses. Founded in Paris in 1987, ARTTIC now maintains offices in France (Paris and Toulouse), Belgium (Brussels), Germany (Munich and Berlin), England (Derby) and Israel (Tel Aviv).
 

The European Lead Factory, Europe’s largest collaborative drug discovery platform, continues its success story

2 May 2019, Munich (Germany) The European Lead Factory (ELF) secured a total project budget of EUR 36.5 million under the second framework of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). Over the next five years, 20 partners in 7 countries will push forward the transformation of potential drug targets to new medicines in the new project ESCulab (European Screening Centre: unique library for attractive biology) under the European Lead Factory brand.

Jon de Vlieger, coordinator of the ESCulab consortium at Lygature, commented: “It’s truly exciting to continue the onboarding of new and innovative proposals for screening and provide high quality starting points for drug discovery to academics and SMEs throughout Europe. In an effort to broaden our scope we are not only looking for target-based approaches, but now also enable phenotypic screens.”

Proven platform for smart new ideas

Universities, research organisations and SMEs have a diverse range of potential drug targets but cannot easily access suitable compound libraries and screening facilities. Pharmaceutical companies need access to high quality targets to bring innovative therapies to the patient. The European Lead Factory combines the large high-quality compound libraries derived from the pharmaceutical industry and the Public Compound Collection and Europe’s leading screening facility with the innovative targets held by academic organisations in a public-private partnership. This offers an ideal platform to translate early-stage fundamental biological research into credible and investable starting points for drug discovery campaigns.

Stefan Jaroch, project lead of Bayer AG, confirms that: “the European Lead Factory has clearly shown how crowd sourcing and collective intelligence can indeed advance biological concepts into drug discovery projects that benefit academia, industry, society and ultimately patients.”

New ideas + New partners = New chances

Over the next five years, the European Lead Factory will initiate 185 new drug discovery projects by screening medically relevant drug targets from European researchers, small and medium-sized enterprises and pharmaceutical industry against the ELF library of 550,000 unique chemical compounds.

The successful concept of the European Lead Factory has already encouraged additional private partners to join. The ESCulab Project welcomes the two pharmaceutical companies Servier and Grünenthal as well as the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), the leading product development partnership in the field of antimalarial drug research and development.

Tim Wells, Chief Scientific Officer at MMV, adds: “We are thrilled to participate as ESCulab and the European Lead Factory represent a chance for new partnerships for MMV, both with the EU through IMI and with a variety of highly creative companies. These partnerships give access to a novel, high quality chemical library that we believe is important to be screened against high priority malaria targets.”

The consultancy team at ARTTIC, an international project management company, has been involved in the European Lead Factory from the very beginning in 2012.

Claudia Pfander, Senior Consultant at ARTTIC, states: “We always believed in the European Lead Factory concept and are very excited to guide the ESCulab consortium on their way to success. In our role as pharma consultant, we will support ESCulab with ARTTIC’s comprehensive IMI expertise. Through ESCulab, ARTTIC will further expand its already strong engagement in IMI2.”

About the European Lead Factory

The European Lead Factory is a pan-European platform for drug discovery that is giving a major boost to drug discovery in Europe by connecting innovative drug targets to a high-quality compound library and high-throughput screening facilities.

Please visit www.europeanleadfactory.eu to learn more about collaborative drug discovery.

Acknowledgement of support 

This project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 [1]Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No. 806948: ‘ESCulab: European Screening Centre; Unique Library for Attractive Biology’. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations and the Medicines for Malaria Venture.

Brexit and EU funding – What you should know and how ARTTIC can support you

In times when Brexit seems more uncertain than ever, both the EU and the UK government have put guarantees in place to underwrite H2020 funding at least until the end of 2020:

No funding changes until Great Britain officially leaves the EU

The UK will continue to operate under EU law until it officially leaves the EU at the end of March 2019, which includes the eligibility of UK legal entities to participate and receive funding in Horizon 2020 programme.

UK guarantee of funding for successful projects submitted before the end of 2020

In addition, the UK government has guaranteed that, even in the event of a hard BREXIT, it will underwrite the funding of any projects arising from successful bids submitted before the end of 2020 to all Horizon 2020 calls which are open to third party participants. This guarantee applies for the whole duration of the project.

Therefore, despite the current uncertainty over BREXIT in general, the message regarding H2020 for UK participants is “continue as normal”. We are happy to assist you should you have any further questions or want to take the chance of applying for EU grants now!

Contact in Derby, UK:
David Bone, Senior Consultant
email: bone@arttic.eu -
Tel: +44 (0)1332 974782 / Mob: +44 779 192 3022

The new European collaborative project SCREENED aims to develop three-dimensional (3D) cell-based in vitro tests to better characterize the effects of endocrine disruptors on thyroid gland function. This method will overcome the limitations of existing tests, being more sensitive at low doses of exposure to chemicals, and enabling the prediction of their toxicity on human health in a sex-specific manner.

Endocrine disruptors (EDs) are a class of chemicals used to produce materials commonly found in everyday life, such as some plastics, tin cans, electrical and household appliances, cosmetics, pesticides, etc. EDs are, however, not without danger: these molecules interfere with the endocrine system, disrupting the physiological production and the target effects of hormones. In particular, EDs have proven effects on the reproductive system and an incidence on the occurrence of obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases during aging.

There is also growing evidence that EDs strongly interfere with the functioning of the thyroid. EDs cause changes in thyroid hormone concentrations, the peripheral metabolism of these hormones and the signalling of their receptors. The mechanism by which they act on the thyroid axis is, however, still far from being elucidated: the tests currently available are strongly limited by the availability of adequate quantities of human thyroid tissue and by the inability to predict the effects of EDs after low dose exposure.

The new European collaborative project SCREENED aims to develop new 3D in vitro tests to overcome these limitations. Based on 3D constructions of rodent and human thyroid cells, these tests will for the first time mimic the structure and function of the native thyroid gland and, thus, its vascular and morphogenetic anatomical characteristics. Professor Lorenzo Moroni, the Coordinator of the SCREENED project, explains: “These new 3D in vitro thyromorphic models will make it possible to predict with more sensitivity and specificity the effects of EDs on thyroid function, compared to conventional molecular and 2D in vitro assays. These tests will also allow selective identification of female and male responses to the exposure to EDs and to test simultaneous action of different EDs on thyroid function.”

The SCREENED project is part of a bigger cluster of eight research projects, all funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, and each focusing on a different aspect of new testing and screening methods to identify EDs. SCREENED brings together nine European universities and companies. ARTTIC has supported the proposal development and is now taking care of the project’s day-to-day management, communication, dissemination and exploitation activities. “I am very happy about the successful proposal we could develop together with the consortium and we are excited to be partner of this important research project”, says Annette Ringwald, Managing Director at ARTTIC . “With our long-standing experience in EU research project management, we will support the SCREENED consortium to deliver and disseminate the targeted results and achieve the expected impact.”

The ambition of the SCREENED project is that these new 3D in vitro tests, as well as the increased knowledge about adverse reactions after exposure to EDs, will be used for regulatory purposes, ultimately to improve human health.

Partner organisations:

• Universiteit Maastricht (Netherlands)
• Universita degli study di Parma (Italy)
• Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)
• Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche (Italy)
• Presens Precision Sensing GmbH (Germany)
• University College Dublin, National University Of Ireland (Ireland)
• Atturos Limited (Ireland)
• ARTTIC SAS (France)
• Cyprotex, an Evotec Company (United Kingdom)

Project duration: 01/01/2019 – 31/12/2023
EU financial contribution: 5 655 088,75 €

CONTACT:

Coordinator:
Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Moroni
University of Maastricht - Complex Tissue Regeneration Department
l.moroni@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Phone: +31 645696088

Project Office:
ARTTIC
screened-arttic@eurtd.com
Phone: +33 1 53 94 54 82

As part of its field test campaign, C-BORD partners have deployed prototypes for enhanced X-ray imaging, passive radiation detection and evaporation based detection at Deepwater Container Terminal Gdańsk.

© National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ)

In the image above, Polish customs officers from the Tax Administration Chamber in Gdańsk direct a cargo container through two sets of Radiation Portal Monitors developed by Symetrica and CEA, then scanning by the Smiths Detection mobile X-ray trailer.

Following the field test of a mobile checkpoint scenario at a Hungarian-Serbian land border in May, testing of the rapidly relocatable checkpoint scenario continues at DCT Gdańsk through the month of June, and will be followed by a last field test of the full suite of five technologies (adding tagged neutron inspection and photo-fission) in a fixed installation scenario in Rotterdam in September.

C-BORD demonstrates that the advanced technologies used in combination can provide more complete information to the customs analyst and improve non-intrusive inspection processes to stop the trafficking of dangerous or illegal goods which could harm citizens, while facilitating the flow of legitimate commercial cargo across borders. Researchers working together with Customs and industry will assess the technologies individually, and, importantly, the added value of combining technologies, thus exploiting their complementary strengths, with data visualisation in a single user interface.

ARTTIC is pleased to collaborate on C-BORD and to see this exciting project come to fruition.

See video of the Gdańsk field test. Registration for the final public workshop on 9^th October 2018 in Rotterdam will open shortly and details can be found on the C-BORD website.

An important event took place on the 23rd and 24th May in Warsaw – the first of four Trials in the DRIVER+ project. And Euronews was there to film it all. The four-minute video will be broadcast on Euronews during w/c 18th June and will be available on the Euronews Futuris and DRIVER+ websites.

DRIVER+ Trial 1 provided a practical demonstration of the potential of a Common Operational Picture (COP) approach at the European level with both tabletop and field-based components. A major incident was simulated, based on a real incident, in which a highly toxic mud-like liquid flooded a large area, resulting in 15 fatalities and a further 200 people injured by the chemical inundation.

Find out more about the DRIVER+ Trial 1 on the DRIVER+ website.

In May 2018, C-BORD starts field testing five new and enhanced non-intrusive inspection technologies at three representative European customs inspection sites.

Following three years of research and development, the C-BORD Consortium is ready to deploy its equipment for field tests on customs inspection sites. Prototypes for enhanced X-ray imaging and passive radiation detectors have been developed, as well as prototypes for new technologies not yet available on the market today for large-volume cargo inspection: Evaporation Based Detection, Tagged Neutron Inspection, and Photo-fission. Project partners will deploy their prototypes for a mobile checkpoint at a Hungarian-Serbian land border crossing in May, for a rapidly relocatable checkpoint at a medium-sized port in Poland in June, and finally for a fully-automated seaport in The Netherlands in September. Researchers working together with Customs and industry will assess the technologies individually, and, importantly, the added value of combining technologies, thus exploiting their complementary strengths, with data visualisation in a single user interface. The X-ray, passive radiation detection, and Evaporation Based detection devices will inspect pre-selected commercial cargo and all five technologies will inspect “mock-up” containers, in which target threat materials can be placed, to gather as much data as possible on the effectiveness of the devices and their suitability for Customs’ operational environment.

Download the full press release (PDF).

An article on the soon to be completed NIPSE project has been published by the European Commission, as part of their R&I projects success stories!

This publication follows the NIPSE final public workshop held on 26-27 April 2018 at the occasion of the ILA Berlin airshow.

NIPSE - Novel Integration of Powerplant System Equipment - is a collaborative research and innovation project in the field of aeronautical engineering funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Since its launch in June 2015, NIPSE’s partners have jointly addressed the challenges linked to novel aircraft engine architectures, in particular UHBR (Ultra-High Bypass Ratio) engines, and the integration of these engine systems into the aircraft nacelle.

During the workshop, the NIPSE consortium partners have presented their novel solutions and major achievements especially with respect to equipment placement optimisation, heat exchangers, overheat and fire detection as well as novel electrical and pneumatic interconnections.

This article illustrates that NIPSE has been delivering excellently and that it is very well received by the external audience.

ARTTIC has been supporting NIPSE since its early days and is very proud of the teams collaboration and very good project results!

Interested in #space and #swarmsatellite? Save the date for the H2020 S3NET Summer school on 15-17th May at Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy). Speakers from both industry and academia will present their research and share knowledge in the following areas:

• Mission scenarios Optical and SAR
• Payload processing software and hardware
• Electronics and telemetry & telecommand
• Formation flying

For more details on the agenda and registration visit our website: http://s3net-h2020.eu/S3NET-Summer-School/!

The summer school is free of charge for participants.

A new multi-million euros European research and development project will develop new Service Operation Vessel (SOV) designs and business concepts to meet the urgent and growing needs of the offshore wind operations and industry. The project is co-led by ARTTIC and Rolls-Royce Marine.

As wind farms are moving further offshore, operations and maintenance (O&M) providers are following them into more hostile waters with more challenging service demands. The relatively high cost of wind farm maintenance today has a negative impact on the competitiveness of offshore wind produced electricity. In addition, the current safety requirements limit design and operational flexibility. Future vessels to service the offshore windfarms will have to be both more efficient and safe.

The three year long NEXUS project has been granted 3.3M€ from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research programme to help tackle these challenges. With a total budget of 4.4M€, NEXUS ultimately aims to deliver an advanced service vessel concept optimised for maximum performance and safety with minimised lifetime cost by 20 per cent and with reduced CO₂ emission by 30 per cent compared to current state of the art vessels.

Asbjørn Skaro, Director of Systems, Rolls-Royce Marine, said: “The number of European SOV’s are estimated to quadruple within the next ten years. Through the NEXUS project, we aim to provide a vessel concept with improved and new solutions for operations and maintenance of offshore wind turbines and farms. The overall goal is to make offshore wind power more cost-effective.”

NEXUS will develop and demonstrate a novel, beyond state of the art, specialised vessel, and logistics for safe and sustainable servicing of offshore wind farms. This will be achieved by designing and validating a reference concept SOV that will integrate new and emerging technologies. To allow room for design creativity and flexibility, the project will also recommend new safety regulations for windfarm service vessels.

NEXUS includes simulation, model testing and consideration of the most suitable construction and production principles for small series or one off vessels of this type. Key aspects of NEXUS include environmental impact assessment, cost estimation as well as both the marketability (technology push), and the cost effectiveness of the offshore operations concerned (demand pull).  

Dr Romanas Puisa, Safety Researcher at the Maritime Safety Research Centre of University of Strathclyde, one of the key leaders of the NEXUS project, believes that the project will have a great impact on the whole value chain. He said: “NEXUS will impact EU marine businesses by reducing costs and providing industry with a tool set that will give them a competitive edge in the European Waters and the ability to use the same process to expand in to new wind markets around the world“.

NEXUS will enable an increase in the professional skills of workers and the capability of the European marine and maritime industry to develop and commercialise specialised vessels and related technology. This will particularly benefit SMEs and has the potential to support European growth and employment through development of a blue economy.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 774519

The H2020 project NIPSE - "Novel Integration of Powerplant System Equipment" (www.nipse.eu) was mentioned as an example in the recently released EC/INEA brochure on aviation research for Safe and green aviation in Europe.

Download the full brochure at https://ec.europa.eu/inea/sites/inea/files/aviation_brochure_2017_web_2.pdf

The recently completed EU-funded FP7 projects HAIC, SAFUEL and STORM are profiled in the Cordis Results Pack “Lifting off for safer aviation in Europe” which highlights projects contributing research and innovations for increasing aviation safety.  

SAFUEL contributes design rules for a safer fuel system against icing conditions and metal-free gauging prototypes for reducing fire hazard. SAFUEL Coordinator Bruno Reynard of Zodiac Aerospace is interviewed in the article which focuses on exploitable outcomes including the water-in-fuel sensor and the icing test bench. Further information can be found at http://safuel-fp7.eu/

STORM provides advanced simulation methods to better understand engine component behaviour under icing conditions, thus enabling improvements to aero-propulsive systems design.

HAIC has developed new sensor technology for aircraft to detect and avoid high-altitude ice crystals, a weather phenomenon which can be potentially hazardous to aircraft.

Congratulations to the teams on the successful completion of their projects!

EU funded FP7 project TOICA is highlighted in the European Commission's Cordis Result in Brief: “Innovating aircraft design for better heat-control”.

TOICA Coordinator Pierre Arbez of Airbus is interviewed in this article which recaps the innovations of the TOICA project and explains how TOICA results are being integrated by major software vendors to provide capabilities for aircraft architects enabling them to take into account thermal considerations at an early phase in the design.

Further information can be found on http://www.toica-fp7.eu/

Congratulations to the TOICA partners on this successful collaboration!

The WRIST project, a EU funded research and innovation project which is developing and will demonstrate flexible and cost effective joining processes for rail products, has released its third newsletter with an overview of the project, a special focus on ‘WP2 – New aluminothermic welding process’ including an interview with Dr. Jan Hantusch, Head of Pre-Development at the GTG Technology Innovation Center. The newsletter is available here (http://goo.gl/f6PHwQ) and it also includes an invitation for subscribing to receive future updates.

Since the early beginning until its closure in summer 2016, from proposal preparation and negotiation to project management ARTTIC has provided daily support to the Actuation 2015 FP7 project, gathering 54 partners. #Actuation 2015 has received an Airbus “Award for Excellence” 2016.

This recognition is the result of 4.5 years of integrated work on aircraft control systems associating European airframers and key suppliers. The integrated aircraft control modular platform and the common modules specified and developed (DAL-A avionics, power electronics, data buses, sensors…) are key enablers for the electrical aircraft competitiveness. The more electrical aircraft control has performed a major step forward.

The NEURINOX Graphic Novel “Out of the blue” is now online at http://www.neurinox.eu/

This is an easy-to-read support about the NEURINOX Project. More information on the making and purpose of this novel can be found in the press release also issued.

Enjoy the read !

The WRIST project, a EU funded research and innovation project which is developing and will demonstrate flexible and cost effective joining processes for rail products, has released its second newsletter with an overview of the project, an interview with Stuart Jackman (managing director of Jackweld) and an invitation to visit GTG booth at InnoTrans 2016. The newsletter is available here (http://goo.gl/f6PHwQ) and it also includes instructions for subscribing to receive future updates.

SECURE, a research project in cardiovascular disease prevention funded by the EU H2020 programme, was awarded the Prize for Best European Cooperation Project from Fundación para el conocimiento Madrid.

You can find further details at http://www.madrimasd.org/informacionidi/noticias/noticia.asp?id=66858 (in Spanish).

Paris, France / Munich, Germany – July 1, 2016

In pursuit of continuing high quality service delivery, ARTTIC has completed its takeover of GABO:mi.

“The GABO:mi people, who are joining us, strengthen ARTTIC’s position as European market leader” said Christian Baumhauer, the President of ARTTIC. “Our combined excellent knowledge and experience will provide us with the means to expand services, deliver deeper support for more proposals and projects. This is great news for our clients and our people. This will allow ARTTIC to further sharpen its strategic focus on providing mission-critical services."

GABO:mi is a German company with a strong track record of successful projects in biological sciences. In addition to the strengthening of ARTTIC’s leadership in consultancy and management services for European research and technology-related partnerships, this takeover also reinforces ARTTIC resources in Germany, especially in the Horizon 2020 fields for health, demographic change and wellbeing.

As part of the takeover, responsibility for supporting 30 projects and 20 employees will be transferred to ARTTIC. In addition, ARTTIC is acquiring :milliarium, a web-based project management tool developed and used by GABO:mi for the management of European projects, especially H2020 and Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI).

About GABO:mi

Founded in 2005, GABO:mi gained extensive expertise with diverse EU funding instruments and managed more than 45 medium- and large-scale collaborative projects in FP7, Horizon 2020 and IMI.

GABO:mi was ranked on place 3 among the TOP SMEs in the Final FP7 Monitoring Report in March 2015, being the best German enterprise in this list. Additionally, GABO:mi was certified according to DIN EN ISO 9001 obliging for excellence in cooperation with the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM).

As ARTTIC, the GABO:mi team has widespread experience in the management of European projects. The project managers are familiar with the structures of research institutions and with their governing principles. With their expertise and overview they are a perfect partner to shoulder all management and dissemination tasks a successful European project requires.

About ARTTIC

ARTTIC assists clients from all business and research sectors, small and large, private and public, to ensure the success of their collaborative research & innovation ventures. During close to 30 years of success, ARTTIC developed and demonstrated expertise in the set-up and management of more than 300 large-scale ambitious projects of which 44 already successful under H2020 first calls, Clean Sky calls included. Based on its long-standing experience in a range of funding programmes across scientific and technological domains, ARTTIC helps clients to move from strategic plans to effective competitive research and development of innovative solutions, resulting in successful applications and high-performance businesses.

Founded in Paris in 1987, ARTTIC is now a group of companies with main offices in France (Paris and Toulouse), Germany (Munich and Berlin), Belgium (Brussels), England (Derby) and Israel (Tel Aviv). In 2015, ARTTIC has been ranked first SME in Europe by the European Commission considering the number of grant agreements signed by ARTTIC.

From 26 April to 6 May 2016, the DIADEMS consortium organised a summer school in Cargèse, Corsica, dedicated to the emerging field of quantum sensing technologies. The event, which was hosted by the IESC (Institut d’Études Scientifiques de Cargèse), attracted a total of 60 students from all over the world.

The programme covered the different quantum-enhanced sensing techniques, with a focus on the Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) center in diamond, while providing an overview of several complementary, and sometimes competing, magnetometry methods. The lectures were given by a total of 23 pre-eminent international scientists.

The summer school was a huge success and feedback from the students and speakers alike was very positive. All participants were pleased with the interesting and varied content of the lectures, the interactive learning atmosphere and the great networking opportunities.

For the detailed programme and further information, please visit the event website.

To learn more about the DIADEMS project, please visit the project website.

The LOCOMACHS project successfully held the Advanced Aerostructure Technology Forum 2016, its final demonstration event, on the 16th June 2016 at the Lloyds Bank Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre on the MTC’s campus in Coventry (UK). In total, 153 people attended the Advanced Aerostructure Technology Forum. The day included plenary sessions, exciting live demonstrations, and keynote speaches from the Aerospace Technology Institute, GKN Aerospace, Airbus Operations Ltd and Saab AB during the concluding session on the industrial take up beyond LOCOMACHS.

More information on LOCOMACHS or this event can be found here.

The FP7 project ACTUATION2015 successfully organised the A2015 European Public events (Public Forum and Exploitation workshop) on 15th and 16th  March 2016 in Toulouse. In addition to A2015 partners, more than 50 persons from organisations external to the project participated.

Please visit www.actuation2015.eu for the full programme and presentations as well as more information on the project.

The H2020 project EPICEA (Electromagnetic Platform for lightweight Integration/Installation of electrical systems in Composite Electrical Aircraft) held its kick off meeting on 1-3 February 2016 in Montreal, Canada. Coordinated by ONERA and Polytechnique Montreal, the EPICEA project brings together an international consortium of 9 organisations (including ARTTIC) from Europe and Canada, composed of research centres, academics, SMEs and industrials. The project will run for 36 months.

The FP7 project ENOVAL (ENgine mOdule VALidators) has created Learning Modules. Ten modules about different topics are now available for download on the ENOVAL website. These modules have been thought as ready-to-teach material with the purpose of facilitating dissemination of technologies investigated within ENOVAL. They were realized jointly by industry and academic partners. The contributors made sure to provide enough background information as well as a list of recommended complementary readings.

Led by MTU Aero Engines, 35 partners from ten European countries are developing new low-pressure spool technologies for turbofans within ENOVAL: geared and non-geared, with bypass ratios of between 12:1 and 20:1 and overall pressure ratios of between 50:1 and 70:1.

The WRIST project, a EU funded research and innovation project which is developing and will demonstrate flexible and cost effective joining processes for rail products, has released its first newsletter with an overview of the project and an invitation to join the exploitation board. The newsletter is available here (http://goo.gl/f6PHwQ) and it also includes instructions for subscribing to receive future updates.

The FP7 Project SAFUEL (The Safer Fuel System) succesfully organised its second public forum to share and discuss project results and achievements in the domain of innovative solutions for aircraft fuel systems.

The event took place at the Bristol Zoo (Bristol, United Kingdom) on 3^rd February 2016. Speakers from both industry and academia presented the results of research performed by the SAFUEL partners over the last three and a half years. Topics included fuel system icing and water detection and innovative gauging technologies and inerting systems.

More information is available at www.safuel-fp7.eu/page/fuel-system-forum

Coordinated by Bob van de Water, Professor of Toxicology at Leiden University (The Netherlands), EU-ToxRisk brings together an international consortium of 39 partner organisations composed of academia, SMEs, large industry, contract research organisations (CROs) and regulatory bodies. EU-ToxRisk (www.eu-toxrisk.eu) builds on testing strategies and knowledge developed in previous national and European projects, including the SEURAT-1 programme, a cluster of seven projects in the field of animal-free safety assessment: 2010-2015 (www.seurat-1.eu/). For more information, see the official Press release.

The FP7 STORM project will organise its first public workshop to present and discuss challenges and innovative solutions in simulation and technologies for icing conditions.
The event will be hosted by STORM partner Office national d'études et de recherches aérospatiales (ONERA) in Lille, France, on the 17th November 2015.
Speakers from both industry and academia will present the latest progress of the research done by the STORM partners in the domains of ice release mechanisms understanding and prediction, ice accretion within the engine environment and innovative Ice Protection Systems (IPS).
Registration is now open on the STORM website: fp7-storm.eu

SECURE, a research project funded by the EU H2020 programme, now has a dedicated website: http://www.secure-h2020.eu. SECURE will be the first trial testing the efficacy of a fixed dose combination (FDC) polypill for secondary cardiovascular prevention in the elderly population (≥ 65 years old). The project started on 1st May 2015 and its members will soon attend the ESC Congress in London (Aug 29 - Sep 02). Visit the website to learn more about SECURE objectives and partners!

A new European Union research and innovation project, TARGET (Training Augmented Reality Generalised Environment Toolkit) was successfully launched in May 2015. The project, bringing together the expertise of 16 organisations, will jointly deliver a pan-European serious gaming platform featuring new tools, techniques and content for training and assessing skills and competencies of Security Critical Agents (SCAs), including counterterrorism units, border guards and first responders (police, firefighters, ambulance services, civil security agencies or critical infrastructure operators). From 3-5 June 2015, representatives from the security and defence industry, from research and academia, SMEs, end-users and several European institutions, from 10 EU member states, will come together in Paris to launch the project. TARGET will receive nearly 6€ million in funding from the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme throughout its three year duration, from May 2015 to April 2018.

For more information, download the official press release here.

ACTUATION 2015 has the objective to standardize a set of modules for Electro-Mechanical Actuators in Aircraft. The standardization process is now on its way through the creation of a CEN Workshop that held its kick-off meeting on January 28, 2015 in Brussels at the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) premises.  An initial Business Plan on “Modules for Electro-Mechanical Actuators in Aircraft has been issued as a starting point.

The objective for this Workshop 77 is to deliver within the next twelve months a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) and corresponding workplan for the submission of the CWA to further international standardization.

This standardisation process is and has been supported by ARTTIC as part of the ARTTIC Innovation Support provided  in FP7 and HORIZON 2020 projects.

LASHARE is a European Commission co-funded research project with the goal of sharing laser expertise. Coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT, more than 36 partners from industry, small and medium sized businesses (SME) and six of the most renowned research and technology development organisations have teamed up to develop and apply an approach called Laser-based Equipment Assessment (LEA). In this, an industrial user, an SME equipment supplier and a research and technology development partner jointly conduct an assessment of a laser-based equipment. Now LASHARE calls for additional project partners.

In such an assessment, the project partners conduct the definition of manufacturing relevant objectives, the implementation of technological enhancements and the final validation in a production like environment. The end of such an assessment produces a robust prototype of the laser-based equipment that is fully in line with market expectations.

For the full press article click here

For information on the call click here

From May 12 to May 14, 2014, representatives from the security & defence industry, from research and academia, SMEs, end-users and several European institutions, from 13 EU member states and 2 associated countries, came together in Madrid to kick off the project. With 33.4€ million funding from the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, DRIVER is the largest crisis management research & innovation project in Europe, if not the world, for the foreseeable future.

Over the next four and a half years, the consortium will work on the development of a pan-European test-bed of virtually connected exercise facilities and crisis laboratories where users, providers, researchers, policy makers and citizens can work jointly and iteratively on new approaches and solutions to emerging crisis management issues. This will facilitate capability development through the provision of appropriate methodologies and infrastructures. The DRIVER Test-bed will help to develop a portfolio of crisis management tools to strengthen crisis management capabilities at member state and EU level.

The two key dimensions of DRIVER – the Test-bed and the Portfolio of Tools - are complemented by a third dimension: sharing a common understanding of crisis management across Europe. Crisis management practitioners, policy makers, technology suppliers and the citizenry will be invited to join the DRIVER Community. This constantly evolving Community will enable an intensive collaboration with and between crisis management stakeholders concerned by societal and technological innovation in CM and its up-take. The development of the DRIVER Portfolio of tools and the set-up of European test-bed facilities will produce a set of new capabilities for more effective European crisis management. The long-term sustainability of the test-bed, processes and tools will enhance European resilience and crisis management capabilities beyond the duration of the project. The project will be coordinated by European IT services leader Atos with technical and scientific support from the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Technological Trend Analysis (INT).

Read the official press release here.

Tel Aviv, Israel, May 2014 – The SAFEWATER project - Innovative tools for the detection and mitigation of CBRN   related contamination events of drinking water, has been selected by the European Commission to further research into solutions for preventing and managing CBRN threats to drinking water. The project held its kick-off meeting on 29 and 30 April 2014 at the Fraunhofer-ISOB, the scientific coordinator’s premises, in Karlsruhe, Germany. SAFEWATER is funded by the European Commission under the FP7 SECURITY programme (grant n° 312764).

"ARTTIC is proud to partner with well-established companies and institutions on this most relevant project on drinking water security. We are looking forward to generate with our partners, and eventually with urban communities worldwide, years of experience in ensuring water quality in the challenging environment of densely populated urban areas. We want to thank the European Commission and our partners for the opportunity to carry out this highly innovative project” says Anna Ellinge Madar, Coordinator of the SAFEWATER project and CEO of ARTTIC in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Read the official Press Release here.

From Maria Weiland, Director Business Development R&D at Saab Aeronautics, “ARTTIC is a core partner for the LOCOMACHS project coordinated by Saab Aeronautics. Thanks to the quality of ARTTIC services, methods and tools as well as the commitment of its skilled team, a strong cooperation has been established within the project. Since the development of the project proposal, ARTTIC accurate advice and support in the set-up of the project and the partnership have been valuable elements very well recognised and appreciated. This is ensuring a successful and smooth progression towards objectives with our 31 partners from 10 countries focused on the scientific and technical aspects of the work”

LOCOMACHS (LOw COst Manufacturing and Assembly of Composite and Hybrid Structures) is a collaborative research and development project, gathering 31 European partners. The final demonstrations of this large project will be showcased at the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry (UK), in the beginning of 2016. More information on the LOCOMACHS project on www.locomachs.eu

European collaboration SOLAR-JET for the first time demonstrates the entire production path of “solar” kerosene obtained directly from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide (CO2), therein potentially revolutionizing the future of aviation. See more information in the official Press Release or at the H2020 homepage mentioning this news!

New technologies for next generation aero engines focus on lower CO₂ and noise emissions

Munich, Germany, November 29, 2013 – The European Union’s new technology programme ENOVAL (ENgine mOdule VALidators) has been launched. Recently more than 140 representatives from the aerospace industry, from research and academic institutions as well as from the European Commission came together in Freising, near Munich, to kick-off the programme. In this project, which is led by MTU Aero Engines, 35 European partners are jointly developing new technologies for medium-sized, large and very large turbofan aero engines. The aim is to achieve reductions in CO₂ emissions of up to five percent and in noise of up to 1.3 decibels.

For more information, see the official Press Release.

The FP7 project NextFactory started on 1^st September 2013. The project is coordinated by Fraunhofer IPA with strong support by ARTTIC.

The mission of the NextFactory project is to develop and validate a new type of all-in-one manufacturing technology combining for the first time, in a single piece of equipment, 3D free-form printing and ultra-precision 3D assembly. This highly flexible and scalable facility will empower microsystem manufacturers - and in particular SMEs - to effectively produce highly miniaturised Smart Products-in-Package (SPiPs) both in small series and high-throughput production of large parallel batches.

The NextFactory consortium will bring together a multidisciplinary group of leading edge SMEs and academic partners respectively contributing expertise in the new manufacturing technologies and the different application fields. NextFactory will run for 4 years.

The FP7 SECURITY project SAFEWATER started on 1st October 2013. SAFEWATER is coordinated by ARTTIC, in cooperation with White Water Technologies.

The SAFEWATER project will develop an affordable global generic solution for the detection and management of drinking water crises resulting from CBRN contamination. SAFEWATER addresses all potential key drinking water incident management challenges, and in particular, the current shortcomings related to the contamination of water networks by CBRN agents: the lack of effective detection capacities, contamination warning systems, and decision support and management tools.

The project will test and validate the full SAFEWATER solution in three different scenarios, each situated in a different municipality corresponding to a different usage context and to specific security threats.

SAFEWATER brings together 9 partners and will run for 36 months.

SEURAT-1 published the 3rd Volume of its Annual Reports which was presented during its stakeholder event on 5 September 2013 in Brussels.

This report, edited by the project COACH (a FP7 coordination and support action coordinated by ARTTIC), provides a comprehensive overview of the research programme and includes articles from international experts who provide their opinion on the state-of-play in regulatory safety assessment and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

The SEURAT-1 Annual Reports are publically available on www.seurat-1.eu. You can also register your mail address on this website to order a hardcopy free of charge here.

On 5 September 2013 in a dedicated workshop in Brussels organised by the project COACH (a FP7 coordination and support action coordinated by ARTTIC), SEURAT-1 presented to stakeholders its latest scientific achievements.

SEURAT-1, a cluster grouping six integrated projects of the FP7 HEALTH theme focusing on human safety assessment, is currently the largest European research initiative that aims to fundamentally change the way we assess the safety of chemicals.

The 50 participants, representing industry, policy makers, regulators and animal welfare groups appreciated the presentations that explained in a practical and accessible manner how new insights into mechanistic toxicology are being translated into solutions for safety assessment.

More information about the event or the project available here.

The HYCARUS project, HYdrogen Cells for AiRborne USage, partly financed by the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking initiative, has officially started on 1^st May, 2013.

The project aims to design and test a generic fuel cell system to be used in non-essential aircraft applications such as galleys, lavatory or crew rest compartment in a large commercial aircraft, or secondary power source on-board a business jet for applications like an Auxiliary Power Unit.

HYCARUS gathers expertise of 9 partners from 5 European countries who now collaborate  to develop and integrate an emission free, environmentally and economically friendly fuel cell system for airborne usage. Jointly with the Project coordinator, Zodiac Aerospace, ARTTIC is in charge of the management and dissemination activities within the project.

The Kick-off meeting was held from 14^th to 16^th May 2013 in Hamburg, where the official logo was presented.

In respect with the deadline set by the Council and the Parliament in 2003, the European Commission (EC) adopted the marketing ban on animal testing for cosmetics, entering into force on 11 March, 2013. The ban prohibits "to market in the Union cosmetic products containing ingredients which have been tested on animals".

SEURAT-1 is an European research initiative of six research projects and one coordination action (COACH) with the long-term goal of achieving “Safety Evaluation Ultimately Replacing Animal Testing”. Financed jointly by the EC and Cosmetics Industry, SEURAT-1 plays a crucial role in finding the alternative methods replacing testing on animals, and has been mentioned in the official EC Communication and Press Release related to the EU ban.

Within SEURAT-1, ARTTIC is the coordinator of COACH - the coordination and support action to the six research projects. COACH has recently organised a strategically important SEURAT-1 Annual meeting gathering more than 120 participants, focusing on the future steps of the cluster and especially on the emerging Proof-of-Concept paradigms.

For more information on the cluster, its research activities, the EC ban on animal testing and the role of the COACH project, visit the SEURAT-1 website.

On 20 and 21 March 2013 the Committee in Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs organized a Hearing with the title “Schengen / Border Management, state of play and further developments.” The FP7 Security project 284862 FIDELITY was invited to inform the European Parliament about the exiting problems with breeder documents (documents such as e.g. birth certificates that are required for a passport application). The presentation on breeder document security issues was held by one representative of the FIDELITY consortium on 21 March. The Hearing was attended by 150 people, including 15 members of European Parliament. (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/committees/video?event=20130321-0900-COMMITTEE-LIBE&category=COMMITTEE&format=wmv)

The QI2S project is funded within the SPACE area of FP7, SPA.2012.2.2-01: Key technologies enabling observations in and from space. QI2S will last 30 months and bring together 6 partners; a satellite company, industry (payload integration, software, on-board processing), research (software atoms, long-term perspective) and ARTTIC, as the collaborative management service provider. The consortium is led by Elbit Systems Electro-optics (ELOP), who will host the project Kick-Off Meeting on January 23-24, 2013 at its premises in Rehovot, Israel.

QI2S represents a major step beyond ESA’s roadmap for the development of future payload processors.

More than 60 specialists representing five EU-funded projects of the aeronautic field, KIAI, TECC-AE, FIRST, LEMCOTEC and IMPACT-AE, have recently met during the KIAI & TECC-AE Public Workshop at the University of Florence. This event which was successfully organised by ARTTIC aimed at presenting the results obtained in the KIAI and TECC-AE projects, and encouraging discussions on Low NOx technologies for aeroengine combustors.

'This workshop is not only the occasion to present the latest advances in the field of combustion, but also allows to discuss about strategies to reach the new and very ambitious goal of 90% NOx reduction between 2000 and 2050 set out in the new ACARE Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda', said Sebastien Roux, Coordinator of KIAI and TECC-AE.

An article about this Workshop has been published on the European Commission website.

Posters, presentations and photos can be found on the Workshop website.

Launched in January 2012, the SCINTILLA project gathers 9 partners and aims at building an innovative and comprehensive toolbox of devices and best-of-breed technologies for the enhanced detection and identification of difficult to detect radioactive sources and nuclear material:

·         Dealing with the challenge of masked and shielded material

·         Developing effective solutions, which are reliable, portable/mobile and cost effective

·         Finding a reliable replacement for Helium-3, which is the major consumable for today's RPM (Radiation Portal Monitors) devices for neutron detection and has become close to unavailable in the European Union.

SCINTILLA will contribute to minimize the risk of radioactive sources dissemination.

Want to learn more about the SCINTILLA project? Visit our website at www.scintilla-project.eu!

You’ll find all about the project, its objectives and structure, its funding, partners and latest news.

The NEURINOX project aims at elucidating the role of NADPH oxidases (NOX) in neuro-inflammation and its progression to neurodegenerative diseases (ND), as well as evaluating the potential of novel ND therapeutics.

The Project has received a funding support of 11.4 M€ for 5 years from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013). It is coordinated by the University of Geneva.

To know more about the project objectives and its consortium, funding and latest news, please visit its website at: www.neurinox.eu

The German Government recently awarded 74.4 M€ to establish the German Centre for Infection Research (DZIF). ARTTIC contributed extensively to the proposal development.The German Centre for Infection Research (DZIF) will be made up from 27 Universities and Research Establishments spread over 7 sites in Germany. It strives to bridge the translational gap between basic science and research and clinical application. DZIF will foster the strategic coordination of concerted translational efforts aiming at novel diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic measures against the most important infections diseases.

From May 2^nd until May 4^th 2012, ARTTIC staff from Paris, Toulouse, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Munich, Derby and Brussels gathered in Sitges, Spain in order to celebrate 25 years of long-standing successful experience in research and technological development.

At the occasion of the anniversary, ARTTIC`s international staff exchanged common practices and defined strategies for the future, in particular in preparation for the new Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020.