FET-Open in Horizon2020
Work Programme 2014-2015
Roumen Borissov
Future and Emerging Technologies
FET-Open
Research Executive Agency
Content
• Future and Emerging Technologies (FET)
in Horizon 2020
• FET-Open according to Work Programme 20142015 – an overview
• Evaluation criteria for proposals submitted to
the current call of FET-Open
• Evaluation procedure for FET-Open RIA
• FET-Open CSA
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FET in Horizon 2020
Excellent Science pillar in H2020
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European Research Council (13B€)
Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (6,1B€)
Future and Emerging Technologies FET:
Research infrastructures programme (2,4B€)
2,7 B€
"Future and emerging technologies shall support
collaborative research in order to extend Europe’s capacity
for advanced and paradigm-changing innovation. It shall
foster scientific collaboration across disciplines on radically
new, high-risk ideas and accelerate development of the
most promising emerging areas of science and technology
as well as the Union wide structuring of the corresponding
scientific communities."
HORIZON 2020 - THE FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME FOR
3 RESEARCH AND INNOVATION (2014-2020)
FET in Horizon 2020
FET mission
• To promote and support the emergence of radically
new technology areas that will renew the basis for
future European competitiveness and growth and
will make a difference for society in the decades to
come.
• To initiate and shape the development of European
research and innovation eco-systems around such
future and emerging technologies, as seeds of future
industrial leadership and potential solutions for
societal challenges.
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• To turn Europe into the best environment for
responsible and dynamic multi-disciplinary
collaborations on such future and emerging
technologies, including facilitating the wider training
of researchers in new areas.
FET in Horizon 2020
Open, light and agile
FET-Open
Early Ideas
Individual
research projects
Exploring
novel ideas
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Roadmap based research
FET Proactive
FET Flagships
Exploration and
Incubation
Topical clusters
of research projects
Large-Scale
Partnering Initiatives
Developing
topics & communities
Addressing
grand challenges
Common research
agendas
Content
• Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) in
Horizon 2020
• FET-Open according to Work Programme
2014-2015 – an overview
• Evaluation criteria for proposals submitted to
the current call of FET-Open
• Evaluation procedure for FET-Open RIA
• FET-Open CSA
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FET Open in WP2014-15
FET-Open : novel ideas for radically new
technologies
“FET-Open is open!”
• No thematic restriction, not necessarily ICT emphasis
o New areas: space research, medicine, energy…
o TRL 1-3, successful FET project result is a proof of a concept in a lab
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Bottom-up, but targeted - not blue sky research
Collaborative research
Total budget: ~160M€ in 2014-15
Instrument
o Research and Innovation Action - 154M€
o Coordination and Support actions (CSA) – 6M€
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FET Open in WP2014-15
FET-Open call
• Submission & Evaluation
o 1 step submission - 1 step evaluation based on FET specific
evaluation criteria
o High quality peer review – 4 experts per proposals to best
address multi-disciplinary nature of FET
• Grant Agreement Preparation (GAP) – the grants are based
on the submitted proposals
o The information necessary for the preparation of the
Description of action (DoA) has to be in the proposal
o During GAP certain details are fixed, like project periods,
starting date, addressing the ethics recommendations,
financial issues, like third parties
• Time to contract of max. 8 months from cut-off date
o ESR within 5 months, contracts within 3 extra months
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FET Open in WP2014-15
FETOPEN 1: FET-Open research projects
• Specific challenge
• Supporting a large set of early stage, high risk visionary
science and technology collaborative research projects is
necessary for the successful exploration of new foundations for
radically new future technologies. Nurturing fragile ideas requires an
agile, risk-friendly and highly interdisciplinary research approach,
expanding well beyond the strictly technological disciplines.
Recognising and stimulating the driving role of new high-potential
actors in research and innovation, such as women, young researchers
and high-tech SMEs, is also important for nurturing the scientific and
industrial leaders of the future.
• Funding per project: approximately 2 to 4M€
• Budget: 154M€
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Deadlines
30/09/2014 31/03/2015 29/09/2015
Budget
77 M€
38,5 M€
38,5M€
FET Open in WP2014-15
Results from cut-off dates 1&2
• 643 RIA proposals submitted by cut-off date 1
• 24 proposals selected for funding from the first evaluation,
some of them already started work
• Success rate for RIA~3,7%
• 670 proposals submitted by cut-off date 2
• Expected number of funded proposals ~ 12 -> ~1,8%
success rate
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FET Open in WP2014-15
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FET Open in WP2014-15
FET gatekeepers - the kind of research that FET is looking for
Long-term vision: a new, original or radical long-term vision of technologyenabled possibilities going far beyond the state of the art
Breakthrough S&T target: scientifically ambitious and technologically concrete
breakthroughs plausibly attainable within the life-time of the project.
Foundational: the breakthroughs must be foundational in the sense that they
can establish a basis for a new line of technology not currently anticipated.
Novelty: new ideas and concepts, rather than the application or incremental
refinement of existing ones.
High-risk: the potential of a new technological direction depends on a whole
range of factors that cannot be apprehended from a single disciplinary viewpoint.
Interdisciplinary: the proposed collaborations must go beyond current
mainstream collaboration configurations in joint S&T research, and must aim to
advance different scientific and technological disciplines together and in synergy
towards a breakthrough.
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FET Open in WP2014-15
Composition of proposals
Part A: Administrative part of the proposal
Part B : Scientific part of the proposal
16 pages – core proposal
Cover page
Section 1: S&T Excellence
Section 2: Impact
Section 3: Implementation
Additional information
Section 4: Members of the consortium
E.g. legal entity, CV, subcontract, third party
Section 5: Ethics and Security
Ethics self-assessment & supporting
documents
Security checklist
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Cover page strictly
limited to 1 page
Section 1,2 & 3 are strictly
limited to 15 pages!
Section 4 & 5 are
not covered by the
page limit.
Content
• Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) in
Horizon 2020
• FET-Open according to Work Programme 20142015 – an overview
• Evaluation criteria for proposals submitted
to the current call of FET-Open
• Evaluation procedure for FET-Open RIA
• FET-Open CSA
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Evaluation criteria RIA
Excellence
Impact
Implementation
Clarity of targeted
breakthrough and its
specific science and
technology
contributions towards a
long-term vision.
Novelty, level of
ambition and
foundational character.
Range and added
value from
interdisciplinarity.
Appropriateness of
the research methods.
Importance of the
new technological
outcome with regards
to its transformational
impact on technology
and/or society.
Quality of measures
for achieving impact on
science, technology
and/or society.
Impact from
empowerment of new
and high potential
actors towards future
technological
leadership.
Quality of the
workplan and clarity of
intermediate targets.
Relevant expertise
in the consortium.
Appropriate
allocation and
justification of
resources (personmonths, equipment,
budget).
Threshold: 4/5
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Weight:
60%
Threshold: 3,5/5
Weight: 20%
Threshold: 3/5
Weight: 20%
Evaluation criteria RIA
Excellence
1. Clarity of targeted breakthrough and its specific
science and technology contributions towards a
long-term vision.
• Is there a clearly defined long-term vision?
• Is there a clear description of the proposed breakthrough
research? The breakthrough could be related to a problem
that has resisted resolution for years and the proposal
suggests a plausible idea for a solution
• Relevance of the targeted breakthrough for the long-term
vision – it should be outlined how the breakthrough would
lead to the long-term vision
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Evaluation criteria RIA
Excellence
2. Novelty, level of ambition and foundational
character.
• Is the research proposed novel? – it should be more than
continuation of research going on for years
• Is the research proposed ambitious and far-reaching, not
just another small incremental step along a path already
being followed?
• Does the research proposed have a potential to start a
new line of investigation, which can be followed for years
and can lead to completely new technologies?
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Evaluation criteria RIA
Excellence
3. Range and added value from interdisciplinarity.
• To what extent the main idea requires involvement of
knowledge and methodology from different disciplines?
• How are these different disciplines intertwined and how the
ideas from different disciplines support the scientific
breakthrough?
4. Appropriateness of the research methods.
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Is the analysis of the state-of-the-art comprehensive and
complete?
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Relevance of the chosen methods for the achieving the
project objectives
Evaluation criteria RIA
Impact
1. Importance of the new technological outcome with
regards to its transformational impact on
technology and/or society.
• Is the long-term technological outcome clearly defined?
• Is the transformational impact on technology, on society or
on both convincingly argued?
• It is not sufficient to have just a scientific impact based
simply on peer reviewed publications!
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Evaluation criteria RIA
Impact
2. Quality of measures for achieving impact on
science, technology and/or society.
• Are the "standard" measures (scientific publications,
website) properly described and planned?
• Does the proposal goes sufficiently far beyond the
"standard" measures? For example, are there additional
measures, based on new media included?
• Is it clearly explained how the dissemination measures
would support achieving the expected impact?
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Evaluation criteria RIA
Impact
3. Impact from empowerment of new and high
potential actors towards future technological
leadership.
• Are there young researchers in the consortium, especially
principle investigators, who would keep up the research in
a long run?
• Are there SMEs in the consortium with sufficient budget,
who would take up the results from the project and would
eventually carry them over towards innovation and market
realization?
• Are there new actors, who are usually underrepresented in
the specific tasks to be performed by the project (for
example, is there a proper gender balance)?
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Evaluation criteria RIA
Implementation
1. Quality of the work plan and clarity of intermediate
targets.
• Are the objectives specific, measurable, attainable,
relevant, and time-bound (SMART)?
• Is there a clear description of work packages, project
periods, tasks and deliverables?
• Are the intermediate targets (milestones) properly defined
and timely?
It is very important to remember that the work plan,
described in the proposal will become Description of action
in case the proposal is selected for funding!
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Evaluation criteria RIA
Implementation
2. Relevant expertise in the consortium.
• Is the expertise in the consortium of high enough quality in
order to tackle all proposed tasks?
• Is the interdisciplinarity at the ideas level properly reflected
in the composition of the consortium?
• Is the consortium well-balanced, without redundancies?
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Evaluation criteria RIA
Implementation
3. Appropriate allocation and justification of resources
(person-months, equipment, budget).
• Do the person-months allocated correspond to the proposed
tasks to be performed?
• Is the necessary equipment present or properly described
and budgeted?
• Is the overall budget comprehensive, well-balanced, and
convincing?
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Content
• Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) in
Horizon 2020
• FET-Open according to Work Programme 20142015 – an overview
• Evaluation criteria for proposals submitted to
the current call of FET-Open
• Evaluation procedure for FET-Open RIA
• FET-Open CSA
25
Evaluation procedure
One step submission and evaluation
Proposal
Eligibility
Expert
Remote
Quality
Cross-
Panel
Ethics
submission
check
selection
evaluation
check
reading
review
screening
Feedback
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Evaluation procedure
Feedback – ESR sent to the proposers (1)
• Contains the collated individual comments per subcriterion from the four remote evaluators.
• We are completely transparent and present to the
proposers all individual expert opinions without
modifications. This means that some comments could be
mutually contradicting – we believe that consensus is not
always possible, especially for frontier interdisciplinary
research
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Evaluation procedure
Feedback – ESR sent to the proposers (2)
• The intermediate score from the remote evaluation, which
is the input for the panel discussion, is the median from
the individual scores assigned to the proposal. This takes
care of any extreme scores, when they are "outliers."
• The panel has the power to modify, either by consensus or
via voting, the scores from the remote evaluation and to
provide additional comments.
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Evaluation procedure
Additional important details on proposal
preparation
• Operational capacity – reflected in the score for Criterion 3
• In/out of scope – not in terms of topics; reflected in the
scores for Criteria 1 & 2
• Ethics assessment – not part of the evaluation
• Horizon 2020 Open Research Data Pilot – not part of the
evaluation but the participation in the pilot is very
important in order to ensure maximal efficiency from the
EC investments in research
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Content
• Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) in
Horizon 2020
• FET-Open according to Work Programme 20142015 – an overview
• Evaluation criteria for proposals submitted to
the current call of FET-Open
• Evaluation procedure for FET-Open RIA
• FET-Open CSA
30
FET Open CSA
Coordination and Support Actions 2015
Specific challenge: The challenge is to make Europe the best
place in the world for collaborative research on future and
emerging technologies that will renew the basis for future
European competitiveness and growth, and that will make a
difference for society in the decades to come.
Scope: Proposals shall address one of the following topics:
FET Exchange: structuring an emerging FET-relevant topic and
communities
FET Take-Up: actions for stimulating take-up of FET research
results towards impact and innovation
Project size: approximately 0,3 to 0,5M€ per topic
Budget & Deadline: 1,5M€ -> 29/9/2015
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FET Open CSA
One step submission and evaluation
Part A: Administrative part of the proposal
Part B : Scientific part of the proposal
50 pages – core proposal
Cover page
Section 1: S&T Excellence
Section 2: Impact
Section 3: Implementation
Additional information
Section 4: Members of the consortium
Cover page strictly limited
to 1 page
Section 1,2 & 3 are
limited to 50 pages)
E.g. legal entity, CV, subcontract, third party
Section 5: Ethics and Security
Ethics self-assessment & supporting documents
Security checklist
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Section 4 & 5 are
not covered by the
page limit.
Place to be:
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http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/ICT2015
Thank you for your attention!
Roumen.BORISSOV@ec.europa.eu
H2020 website:
http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/
Participant portal:
http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/op
portunities/h2020/index.html
FET Work Programme call text :
http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/wp/2
014_2015/main/h2020-wp1415-fet_en.pdf
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