1. June 2017

Teaming, or institution building, is meant to help strengthen new or already existing centres of excellence by partnering them up with renowned scientific institutions. Among 169 applications for Horizon 2020 funding, 30 were selected in the Teaming Phase 1, thus obtaining funding to finance a detailed business plan for their project proposals. After Phase 2, 10 proposals (including InnoRenew CoE) were chosen and received further funding, in order to develop their winning ideas.

The first meeting of the Horizon 2020, an informal Phase 2 ‘Teaming Club’ was hosted by the InnoRenew CoE project in Koper, Slovenia, on 1^st June 2017. It included representatives from the other nine Teaming-Phase 2 winners, who gathered in Slovenia to discuss their projects, and try to identify shared challenges and common strategy. To make this transfer of information and experience easier, the University of Primorska and Dr. Andreja Kutnar were given the task of coordinating the ten projects.

Dr. Kutnar commented: ‘The experience we will gain from this coordination is priceless. In the Slovenian territory nobody has ever had this kind of opportunity of direct communication with the European Commission, its Research Executive Agency (REA), and especially with consortiums of ten megaprojects with a shared value of 135 million euros – which is only the European Commission’s share, the total amount is significantly higher when we add the national funds the host countries must contribute to the projects.’

For more details on the other nine winning projects, see our previous news article.

Read more about Spreading Excellence & Widening Participation in Horizon 2020.