Horizon 2020: two excellent years for UM
UM has successfully applied for the European Union's Horizon 2020 research programme. In 2019 and 2020, the total subsidy amount awarded rose sharply to more than 27 million euros in both years.
Horizon 2020 ran from 2014 to 2020. With the research programme, the EU focused on stimulating innovation and ensuring Europe's competitiveness. From the first year, UM received subsidies from the program. Until 2019, it was an average of 14.2 million euros per year. In 2019, the amount awarded rose to 27.2 and in the last year it was a comparable amount: 27.6 million euros, spread over 48 research projects.
ERC Grants
Notable projects within this include the two ERC synergy grants awarded in 2019 and 2020. In 2020, it was Cyrus Mody, professor of history of science, technology and innovation at UM for the NanoBubbels project. This international and interdisciplinary project investigates how and where erroneous claims (focusing on nanotechnology) arise and how they can be removed from scientific records.
A year earlier, Beatrice de Gelder, professor of cognitive neuroscience, also received an ERC synergy grant. In the Relevance project, she and colleagues in Germany and Belgium map out how the brain processes physical behavior (body language) of others and how it uses this information to understand intentions, actions and emotions.
Horizon 2020 also includes the ERC advanced grant that Stefan Hild was awarded. This 2 million grant will help test and develop technology to make future gravitational wave observatories, like the Einstein Telescope, even more sensitive than planned.
Successor: Horizon Europe
The Horizon 2020 programme has now been closed, but has a successor. That is Horizon Europe, building on the success of its predecessor, for the period 2021-2027. The European Parliament approved the program at the end of April 2021. Also with Horizon Europe (total budget: 95.5 billion euros) the EU wants to increase Europe's competitiveness by stimulating science and innovation. In addition, the business community and academia are challenged to come up with solutions together for societal issues that play a role throughout Europe.
Click here for EU information on Horizon Europe.
Photo UM homepage: Bobbsled | Flickr | CC BY-SA 2.0
The Einstein Telescope
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