The European Commission launched the new EU Research and Innovation Programme: Horizon 2020 with a budget of nearly EUR 80 billion over 7 years (2014 to 2020). Thus, the new adventure has begun in the research and innovation area.
Nowadays, the people who are interested in research and innovation area are so excited with the new programme of the European Commission and the related and supporting events all over the Europe. The previous programmes, 7th research framework programme (FP7) and Competitiveness & Innovation Programme (CIP) have been completed between the years of 2007 and 2013. Now, the new EU Research and Innovation Programme: Horizon 2020 started as the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme with a budget of nearly EUR 80 billion over 7 years (2014 to 2020). The European Commission had first announced the council decision on establishing the Specific Programme Implementing Horizon 2020 in 2011 and many events have been organized ever since to provide the info about Horizon 2020. One of the most important events was ICT 2013, Europe’s biggest digital technology event,which took place on 6th-8th of Nov, 2013 in Vilnius, Lithuania.
ICT 2013 realized with great interest of 4827 attendees from different countries. The event comprised of many activities such as conference, exhibition, networking sessions, work programme sessions, activities for students and young researchers and connecting ICT & Art communities. The main reasons of the attendees to participate in this event were to gain a better understanding of ICT Horizon 2020 and to network with the people.[1]
Turkish delegates are working on a future internet project
During the event, most of the attendees used Conf4me application that facilitates participation in the conferences so that it was very easy to follow the parallel sessions and their timing and place. The networking sessions on smart cities, open and big data, open innovation and future internet were one of the most attractive sessions. In Shaping Open Innovation for Smart Cities session, Leyla Arsan, CEO of TAGES, presented the results of Hackathonist (http://hackathonist.tumblr.com/) which was organized in Istanbul on Nov 1-3, 2013 within Smart CitySDK project (http://www.citysdk.eu/). Nowadays, we see various hackathons almost in every such kind of events. One of them was also organized in ICT2013. You can see the results thru the following link: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/hackathon-vilnius.
Hackathonist Presentation
“ICT in Horizon 2020” and “Work Programme 2014 and Instruments” sessions were one of the important sessions where the attendees find answers about the Horizon 2020 Programme and the calls to be opened. During the sessions, the ICT topics addressed in the Horizon 2020 were presented and three pillars of the new framework programme were highlighted: “Excellent Science”, “Industrial leadership” and “Societal Challenges”. Morten Møller, Head of Unit F.3 ‘Programme Coordination’, DG CONNECT, European Commission, and one of the speaker of the session, stressed the fact the Horizon 2020 moves towards innovation, getting closer to the market, compared to FP7.[2]
After ICT 2013 Event, the Horizon 2020 2014-2015 calls awaited with great interest opened by the European Commission on Dec 11, 2013. You can access the press release of the announcement through the following link (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-1122_en.htm)
The details of the call are also available in here.
Aslihan Kagnici, December 26, 2013
[1]https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/sites/digital-agenda/files/Results%20of%20ICT2013%20online%20survey.pdf
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/node/68129
