Horizon 2020 goes live

The EU's Research and Innovation programme Horizon 2020, with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years, is now live. A large part of Horizon 2020 is collaborative working and match-funding, so networking has never been more important to your research profile. You can read more about applying for Horizon 2020 grants in their online manual.

The variety of funding streams is enormous and Members may wish to discuss the options available to them with their relevant institution. Nevertheless, below are some of the calls currently open that may be of most interest to ECTS Members.

Personalising Health and Care - this stream comprises a number of topic-specific calls. Those with an initial deadline (two-stage process) of 11 March 2014 include:

• Health promotion and disease prevention: translating 'omics' into stratified approaches;
• Comparing the effectiveness of existing healthcare interventions in the elderly;
• Understanding health, ageing and disease: determinants, risk factors and pathways;
• New therapies for chronic non-communicable diseases.
• See all (two stage) calls closing 11 March 2014.
• See all (single stage) calls closing 15 April 2014

European Research Council (ERC) grants continue to support scientific excellence by individual researchers or projects. Approaching deadlines include the Starting Grant for researchers of any nationality with 2-7 years of experience since completion of PhD (25 March 2014), and the Proof of Concept Grant for ERC grant holders who want to check the market and/or innovation potential of research results from ERC-funded projects (1 April 2014).

The Innovative Medicines Initiative is Europe's largest public-private partnership aiming to improve the drug development process by supporting a more efficient discovery and development of better and safer medicines for patients. The 11th call includes 'Applied public-private research enabling osteoarthritis clinical headway' among its topics. next deadline for expression of interest 8 April 2014

Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCAs) - based on the FP7 Marie Curie Actions, this revamped stream supports the  career development and training of researchers at any stage of their career in all scientific disciplines through worldwide and cross-sector mobility. Two categories are currently open for applications:

• Innovative Training Networks promoting experience outside academia, next deadline 9 April 2014;
• Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) supporting short-term mobility of research and innovation staff (including administrative and technical staff) at all career levels, next deadline 24 April 2014;
• Other calls to host a European Researchers' Night stimulating interest in scientific careers among publics (deadline 4 March 2014), and to support cooperation among Marie Skłodowska-Curie National Contact Points (NCP) (deadline 2 April 2014) are also open.

Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) - this stream funds unexplored collaborations between advanced multidisciplinary science and cutting-edge engineering. The next deadline for the FETOpen scheme which supports early-stage joint science and technology research around new ideas for radically new future technologies is 30 September 2014, although calls for specific topics close sooner.

See the Horizon 2020 website for the full range of calls available under the programme.