NMPTeam News

MNT-era.net Transnational Call 2010 open

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:28:19 GMT

MNT-ERA.NET sets up and runs a structure to sustain and strengthen the collaboration between funding programmes and agencies for transnationally coordinated funding for Micro and Nano Technology research and development in Europe. MNT ERA-Net makes these funding programmes accessible to transnational consortia and opens calls for proposals for transnational R&D projects in the MNT area.

MNT-ERA.NET continues to encourage the submission of commercialisable R&D proposals addressing all fields of micro and nano technologies including production technologies. Project consortia consisting of at least two parties from two different participating countries/regions are invited to submit proposals.

In this Transnational Call 2010, particular emphasis is put on the following applications:

Smart sensor systems for Security, Environment and Entertainment (sensor networks, cognitive systems, spintronics, optical systems).
Medical and health devices (networked monitoring of health parameters, bio sensors and actuators, bio interfaces, lab on chip.
Functionalised interfaces and structures (micro/nano layers and surfaces, micro/nano structured materials, nano particles and powders).
Energy for a mobile life (lightweight and energy efficient components, power generation, storage of energy medium, organic photovoltaics

For further information visit the MNT eranet site.

PPP First Call Proposals evaluations complete.

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:29:01 GMT

The deadline for the first series of cross-thematic calls for the Public Private Partnerships "Factories of the Future" and "Energy Efficient Buildings", was 3 November 2009. For these two calls, 157 proposals were submitted of which one proposal did not meet the eligibility criteria. The remaining proposals are distributed over the different call topics as follows.

Factories of the Future

FoF.NMP.2010-1	Plug and Produce components for adaptive control	21
FoF.NMP.2010-2	Supply chain approaches for small series industrial production	25
FoF.NMP.2010-3	Intelligent, scalable, manufacturing platforms and equipment for components with micro- and nano-scale functional features	16
FoF.ICT.2010.10-1	Smart Factories: ICT for agile and environmentally friendly manufacturing	34
		96

Energy Efficient buildings

EeB.NMP.2010-1	New nanotechnology based high performance insulation systems for energy efficiency	11
EeB.NMP.2010-2	New technologies for energy efficiency at district level	8
EeB.ENV.2010-3.2.4-1	Compatible solutions for improving the energy efficiency of historic buildings in urban areas	5
EeB.Energy.2010.8.1-2	Demonstration of energy efficiency through retrofitting of buildings	10
EeB.ICT.2010.10-2	ICT for energy-efficient buildings and spaces of public use	26
		60

The evaluations have been completed and the coordinators informed of the results.

For the 2 NMP EeB topics 10 projects got above the threshold.

For the 3 NMP FoF topics 23 projects got above the threshold.

Public Private Partnerships.

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:30:01 GMT

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)

As part of the European Economic Recovery Plan, the Commission has launching three Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). The three PPPs represent a powerful means of boosting research efforts in three large industrial sectors - automotive, construction and manufacturing - which have been particularly affected by the economic downturn and where innovation can significantly contribute towards a more green and sustainable economy.

The Commission and the industrial partners work intensively together to develop the implementation plans for the three partnerships:

"Factories of the Future" initiative for the manufacturing sector (€1.2 billion for R&D);

"Energy-efficient Buildings" initiative for the construction sector (€1 billion for R&D); and

“Green Cars” for the automotive sector worth a total of €5 billion, of which €1 billion is for research activities.

The Commission foresees to provide a contribution of 50% to the total R&D budget from the budget of the 7th Framework Programme, with matching investment coming from the private sector. In the PPP approach, there are the following advantages:

Renewed confidence to invest in long-term research even when faced with short-term economic problems;
A leading role for industry, including SMEs, in the definition of the strategic priorities and the implementation of the research;
A multi-annual integrated work programme with a pre-defined budget, ensuring continuity and allowing industry to make long-term investment plans,
A cross-thematic approach going from basic and applied research through to validation and large-scale demonstration, with an increased emphasis on impact and exploitation;
Increased opportunities to support innovation in SMEs; and
A single-stage submission of proposals leading to a faster evaluation process and time to contract.

For the forseeable future the PPPs will be implemented within the Framework 7 Programme involving the thematic areas of NMP, ICT, Transport, Energy and the Environment. For more details on the PPPs visit the European Commissions official site for Research on Industrial Technologies.

Results 3rd Call FP7-NMP

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:29:32 GMT

The 3rd series of FP7-NMP calls for Large, Small and SME targeted collaborative projects have been published. The evaluation followed a two-stage procedure. For the stage-1 deadline of 17 February 2009, 608 proposals were submitted. In the stage-1 proposals an outline had to be given of the foreseen R&D work and the expected impact.
Following the evaluation of these proposals in March 2009, 115 proposals were invited to submit a full proposal for the stage-2 deadline of 22 July 2009. In the full proposal a total overview of the R&D work had to be presented, as well as information about the partners, management structure, impact and exploitation and the dissemination strategy.
115 full proposals were submitted in stage 2, and evaluated in September 2009.

From the 115 evaluated proposals, 48 proposals reached all thresholds and were selected for funding. This represents an overall success rate of 42% in stage 2.

Detailed information about the three separate calls can be found in Table 1.

Table 2 gives an overview of the number of submitted and retained proposals for both stages. All topics have at least 2 retained proposals. Coordinators of these proposals have been invited for grant agreement negotiations.

Table 1: Total overview of submitted/retained proposals and requested budgets in the NMP 2009 call for Large, Small and SME-targeted projects.

Call	LARGE-3		SMALL-3		SME-3
Budget available	125 M€		80 M€		25 M€
	Number	Requested funding	Number	Requested funding	Number	Requested funding
Proposals submitted stage 1	150	995 M€	354	990 M€	104	322 M€
GO proposals stage 1	33	254 M€	64	196 M€	18	59 M€
Success rate stage 1	23%		18%		17%
Proposals submitted stage 2	32	269 M€	64	208 M€	17	60 M€
Retained proposals stage 2	16	128 M€	24	82 M€	8	28 M€
Success rate stage 2	50%		38%		47%

Table 2: Quantitative overview of submitted and retained proposals per topic in the NMP 2009 call for Large, Small and SME-targeted projects.

Topic number	Type	Topic	Stage 1	GO stage 1	Success rate stage 1	Retained stage 2	Success rate stage 2
NMP-2009-1.1-1	Small	Nanobiotechnology: Applying life science principles as model for new nanotechnology-based mechanisms, processes, devices and/or systems	62	10	16%	4	40%
NMP-2009-1.2-1	Small	Nanotechnology for harvesting energy via photovoltaic technologies	70	12	17%	5	42%
NMP-2009-1.2-2	Small	Molecular factory: manufacturing objects with predictable and controllable properties	42	7	17%	3	43%
NMP-2009-2.1-1	Small	Nano-structured materials based on graphene	30	7	23%	2	29%
NMP-2009-2.2-1	Large	Oxide materials for electronics applications	16	4	25%	2	50%
NMP-2009-2.3-1	Small	Biomimetic gels and polymers for tissue repair	49	10	20%	3	30%
NMP-2009-2.4-1	SME	New biomass-based composite materials and their processing	33	6	18%	2	33%
NMP-2009-2.5-1	Large	Light high-performance composites	58	8	14%	4	50%
NMP-2009-2.6-1	Small	Novel membranes for water technologies (SICA)	37	6	16%	3	50%
NMP-2009-3.2-1	Large	nnovative pathways for sustainable chemical production	11	5	45%	3	60%
NMP-2009-3.2-2	Small	Adaptive control systems for responsive factories	64	12	19%	4	33%
NMP-2009-3.4-1	Large	Automation and robotics for sustainable crop and forestry management	19	5	26%	2	40%
NMP-2009-3.4-2	SME	Holistic and integrated approach to high performance, reliable and adaptive machine tool design and production	24	4	17%	2	67%
NMP-2009-4.0-3	Large	Development of nanotechnology-based systems for molecular diagnostics and imaging	28	7	25%	6	50%
NMP-2009-4.0-4	Large	Reducing the environmental footprint of energy intensive industries	18	4	22%	2	50%
NMP-2009-4.0-5	SME	Innovative and knowledge-based tooling industry	47	8	17%	4	50%
Total			608	115	19%	48	42%