EU FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT TIPS

This €1 million prize addresses the issue of the unnecessary use of antibiotics, which is contributing to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. The challenge is to develop a rapid test that will allow healthcare providers to distinguish at the point of care between patients with upper respiratory tract infections that require antibiotics and those that can be treated safely without antibiotics.

The contest has been launched and will run until the end of 2016. Contestants can submit their entries until 17 August 2016.

Specific Challenge:

The goal of this contest is to improve the quality of citizens' health and well-being by helping them to better monitor their food intake with the use of a food scanner.

Expected Impact:

This Horizon 2020 Inducement Prize will thus be awarded to the most significant development towards a portable solution that, alone or in combination with other devices (e.g. smartphones), will enable the European citizens to detect nutrition facts and allergens in several types of food in a precise, efficient and timely manner, using a non-invasive and non-destructive approach, with the goal to help them make optimal informed choices and to improve their health and well-being.

Scope:

The Food Scanner Horizon Prize is a €1 000 000 challenge prize which will be awarded to the technological solution(s) that will best provide citizens with relevant information about their food consumption.

The winning entries should take a step forward from current technologies and solutions in terms of food intake measurement and will have to prove economic viability. In addition, they will have to be demonstrated through clear experimental results.

Deadline Date09-03-2016 17:00:00 (Brussels local time)

 Two prizes of €500,000 are on offer for breaking the optical transmission barriers and collaborative spectrum sharing, through the EU's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

The aim is to develop and demonstrate solutions to societal or technological challenges that have not yet been met.  Contestants including innovators, SMEs and non-profit organisations acting alone or together with other entities, can formally register for the competition starting from May 2015. The deadlines for submissions are 17 December 2015 for Collaborative spectrum sharing prize and 15 March 2016 for Breaking the optical transmission barriers prize.

The contests for the five innovation prizes will start in late 2014 and early 2015.

The prizes, worth €6 million in 2015, cover three different thematic areas of research:

health:

• "Reduction of the Use of Antibiotics Prize",
• "Food-Scanner Prize"

environment:

• "Reduction of Air Pollution Prize"

 ICT :

• "Collaborative Sharing of Spectrum"
• "Optical Transmission Prize".

The European Commission, in cooperation with the European Investment Bank Institute, plan to launch a € 2 Million Horizon prize on a social challenge chosen by the public, as part of Horizon 2020, the EU's biggest ever research and innovation framework programme.

Horizon prizes are inducement prizes that offer a reward to whoever can most effectively meet a defined challenge. The aim is to engage communities to work towards a common goal, spur interest in a particular issue, attract new, dynamic innovators to an area, mobilise additional private investment for research and innovation, and stimulate novel, replicable solutions to the grand challenges, for the benefit of European citizens.The European Commission, in cooperation with the European Investment Bank Institute, plan to launch a € 2 Million Horizon prize on a social challenge chosen by the public, as part of Horizon 2020, the EU's biggest ever research and innovation framework programme.

Horizon prizes are inducement prizes that offer a reward to whoever can most effectively meet a defined challenge. The aim is to engage communities to work towards a common goal, spur interest in a particular issue, attract new, dynamic innovators to an area, mobilise additional private investment for research and innovation, and stimulate novel, replicable solutions to the grand challenges, for the benefit of European citizens.

The objectives are:

•           To tackle the expected capacity crunch of wireless networks faced with booming traffic and usages;

•           To provide innovative yet implementable solutions enabling a significant efficiency improvement in the usage of scarce spectrum resources;

•           To reward excellence in demonstrating one or several innovative methods focusing on the provision of empowerment of local user communities with decentralised spectrum management capabilities;

•           To address the lack of demonstrated system capabilities of disruptive spectrum access and sharing methods, which go beyond the traditional cellular evolution and database, based sharing methods;

•           To foster experimental R&D and early proof-of-concept development to encourage innovation, business, and regulation in the domain of collaborative sharing of spectrum

Objective:

The objective pursued by this inducement prize is to reduce particulate matter air pollution in urban areas through the development of innovative material solutions. These solutions should be design-driven, affordable and sustainable, and they should demonstrate that they can effectively remove and/or prevent the formation of particulate matter in the atmosphere (vehicle exhaust systems will be excluded).

Expected results:

Affordable, sustainable and innovative design-driven material solutions that can effectively remove or prevent the formation of particulate matter in the atmosphere (vehicle exhaust systems will be excluded) and works in the environment targeted for application.

Food-Scanner Prize

Prize money: €1 million

Timeline: Contest opens at the beginning of 2015 and runs until end of 2015

The objective is to unlock the eHealth market with solutions that support citizens in adopting a more active lifestyle and in improving their health by better monitoring food intake. The expected results are an eHealth solution that enables citizens to assess their food intake and provide optimal recommendations to improve their health and well-being. The solution should benefit a wide range of the EU population, from healthy citizens to citizens suffering from food disorders, obesity or allergies.