Dear colleagues,

In case you are interested in bringing your research to a European level, some interesting times are ahead of us. First of all, new calls for proposals have been published for thematic area ‘Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing’. Secondly, the European Commission is currently working on the work programme 2018-2020. If you want to have your saying for the content of the topics, January will be the time to do so.

Contrary to common belief, it is a process in which a dialogue between the European Commission and the several stakeholders plays an important role. The starting point are general ideas, based on the ‘Horizon 2020 Advisory group for Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing’. After a round of feedback, the European Commission elaborates their general ideas to come to a more mature document. This process is repeated several times until the moment the final work programme is published.

In January there will be a new round of feedback and we are asking your help to formulate the UiB’s opinion on the document. The timeframe to do so will be very short (several days). So to be prepared once the opportunity is there, we are already collecting intention of interests so we can contact the interested people directly as soon as we receive the documents.

Why is it interesting to give feedback ?

If you can shape the topic description more in line with your own research, it will be easier to fit in the topic description and submit a good proposal.

What are the chances that your feedback is taken into account by the European Commission ?

We won’t lie, competition is high and there are plenty of stakeholders who want to have their saying. But if you have a good idea and other stakeholders in Europe are sharing your opinion, it is certainly possible to influence the work programme. We did the same process for thematic area ‘SC5’ and we managed to adapt the text. So it certainly is possible.

You are interested, but what do you need to do ?

Inform Corina Guder (corina.guder@uib.no) and Kristof Vlaeminck (Kristof.vlaeminck@uib.no) by sending a mail that you are interested and we will send you the documents as soon as we get them. In case things are not clear or you still have doubts, feel free to contact them as well !”

Kristof