Research Infrastructures (RI) are facilities, resources and services that allow researchers to conduct ground-breaking research in the European Union. They are open and accessible to the best researchers from all around the world, to foster cutting edge innovation for the benefit of citizens and society.
The programme supports activities to consolidate, evolve, open, integrate and interconnect a world-leading ecosystem of research services for researchers in Europe, encompassing both national and pan-European infrastructures.
It aims to cover the continuum of needs from the creation of fundamental knowledge to technology development and innovation, while supporting open science.
The programme is building on continuous policy development under the European Research Area, including the strategy-led approach and roadmap exercise of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) and the use of the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) legal instrument.
Target audiences
- National, regional and pan-European research infrastructure ecosystems
- Research infrastructure service providers
- Researchers from Europe and beyond
- Funding agencies
- Industry
- Open Science policies experts
ESFRI – European Strategy Form on Research Infrastructures
A strategic instrument to develop the scientific integration of Europe and to strengthen its international outreach.
ESFRI Roadmap
ESFRI has established a European Roadmap for research infrastructures (new and major upgrades, pan-European interest) for the next 10-20 years. It stimulates the implementation of these facilities and updates the roadmap as needed. First published in 2006, with 35 projects, it was updated in 2008, 2010, 2016, 2018 and 2021, bringing the number of RIs of pan-European relevance to 63.
ERIC – European Research Infrastructure Consortium
The ERIC facilitates the establishment and operation of Research Infrastructures with European interest. It allows the establishment and operation of new or existing Research Infrastructures on a non-economic basis. The ERIC is a full legal entity under Union law that has legal personality and full legal capacity recognized in all member states.
The Research Infrastructures work programme is structured around four destinations:
Destination INFRADEV – developing, consolidating and optimising the European research infrastructures landscape, maintaining global leadership
The objective of this destination is to consolidate and evolve the European research infrastructure landscape, considering notably the development of pan-European research infrastructures prioritised by ESFRI and the ERICs, and underpinning an effective and agile European Research Area. It supports actions to develop an integrated European ecosystem of research infrastructures, including single-sited facilities, distributed facilities and networks of facilities providing joint services.
Expected impact
- Further consolidation, evolution and optimisation of the European research infrastructure landscape, with the objective of enhancing its capacity and capability to support the continuum of research and innovation needs
- Exploring ways forward towards improved sustainability of the research infrastructure ecosystem and synergies amongst research infrastructure funding sources, considering that funding an increasing number and size of pan-European research infrastructures has a significant impact on research budgets
- Supporting human resources and skills development for an optimal functioning of research infrastructures, through continuous professional training and upskilling of staff in charge of research infrastructures, considering that highly skilled personnel play a vital role in constructing, evolving and operating research infrastructures and serving users; thus, research infrastructures must be able to attract, up-skill and keep specialised staff.
Destination INFRAEOSC – enabling an operational, open and FAIR EOSC ecosystem
This destination serves the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) ambition of contributing to a web of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) research data and providing a trusted and secure federated system of research data and services (EOSC Federation) for researchers in the EU and Associated Countries to store, share, process and reuse within and across disciplines and borders FAIR research outputs and tools for research, innovation and educational purposes.
Expected impact:
- Enabling the definition of standards and the development of tools and services, to allow researchers to find, access, reuse and combine results
- Establishing a sustainable and federated infrastructure that enables open sharing of scientific results
- Ensuring that Open Science practices and skills are rewarded and taught, becoming the norm across the European Research Area
Destination INFRASERV – research infrastructures services to support health research, accelerate the green transition and digital transformation, and advance frontier knowledge
EU supported transnational access to research infrastructures has radically transformed the availability of state-of-the-art facilities for researchers, reinforcing Europe’s strong research performance. Horizon Europe marked a shift towards new types of transnational access grants awarded to consortia of diverse types of facilities that provide access to broad portfolios of installations and scientific services relevant for a large research domain or in support of societal challenge and EU priorities.
Expected impact
- Effective access of European researchers to the best research infrastructure services from national and pan- European research infrastructures (such as ESFRI Projects and Landmarks, ERICs), while ensuring both curiosity-driven and challenge-driven access, considering also that challenge-driven access must notably foster the role of research infrastructures in greening society and improving its resilience to crises.
- Improved research infrastructure services to address evolving scientific and societal challenges, including those related to EU priorities, and to reinforce the excellence, attractiveness and competitive edge of the ERA and its capacity to address future challenges and priorities, considering that this increasingly requires interdisciplinarity and cross-domain collaboration.
- Further opening of national research infrastructures and strengthened access programmes of pan-European research infrastructures in the longer term, addressing sustainability challenges for transnational access and further exploration of synergies, so as to ensure continued and seamless access to the best research infrastructure services, avoiding access gaps over time or redundant offers from facilities crossing different domains and challenges.
- Improved transnational access to new users such as early-stage career researchers and researchers from other fields or sectors, while making sure that these new activities do not come at the cost of already overbooked transnational access services.
Destination INFRATECH – next generation of scientific instrumentation, tools, method and advanced digital solutions of research infrastructures that foster innovation and co-creation with industry
Research Infrastructures require constant technology development to maintain and upgrade their services and to create new ones. The manufacturing capacity of industry is often required for this, and the co-creation of technological components is a defining feature of many research infrastructures.
Expected impact
Reinforced EU resilience with respect to the availability of critical technical research infrastructure components, considering that research infrastructure operations rely in many cases on technical components or material for which Europe is strongly dependent on third countries.
- More robust research infrastructure innovation ecosystems, building also on activities funded in the past on the development of research infrastructure technology roadmaps and co-creation activities with industry.
- Accelerated digitalisation of research infrastructures throughout their entire life cycle.
- Greening of research infrastructures, by advancing and accelerating the reduction of the environmental footprint of research infrastructures operations, while at the same time contributing to increasing their resilience towards energy crises or other resource restrictions such as water.
- The development of more robust research infrastructure innovation ecosystems, including the development and implementation of common research infrastructure technology roadmaps.
Funding
- Grants of up to several million Euros per project, according to the specific topic description. Participants will usually receive several hundred thousand euros per project according to their role and responsibilities in the project.
- The funding rate of this grant will be 70% or 100% of the eligible costs + 25% overhead, depending on the type of funding mechanism. Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) and Coordination and Support Actions (CSA) will cover 100% of the expenses and Innovation Actions (IA) will cover 70% of the expenses.
For questions and more information: smadar@iserd.org.il