A project led by University College Cork (UCC) was one of 35 projects which have, this week, been selected for European Innovation Council pathfinder funding. The UCC project, which has partners in France, Romania and Italy, is researching emerging nanomaterials for scalable miniaturised energy harvesting/storage submodules tailored for the specific needs of standalone, mobile or portable uses such as IoT devices.
University of Limerick and Sligo IT also among winners
Two other projects with Irish partners (the University of Limerick and Sligo IT) were also among the 35 projects. Average EU funding per project is about €4 million.
The European Innovation Council (EIC) Pathfinder Pilot selected 35 projects to develop cutting-edge technologies and will receive €114 million in total following the latest round of applications for funding. The funding comes from Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation programme.
Iordanis Arzimanoglou, expert in genetics and cancer research as well as biotechnology and AI-based medicine, has been appointed as the first EIC programme manager.
The role of programme managers is to develop visions for technological and innovation breakthroughs and bring about synergies across the EIC project portfolio to transform these visions into reality.
Human-centric artificial intelligence
A total of 22 of the selected projects come from the top-down element of the EIC known as Pathfinder Proactive, which encourages researchers from different disciplines to work together on new technologies in the following domains: human-centric artificial intelligence, implantable autonomous devices, breakthrough zero-emissions energy generation for full decarbonisation (average budget per project is €4 million).
The remaining 13 applied for Transition to innovation activities funding, which supports the successful result of a mature research project to commercialise their activities (average budget is €2 million).
In the Enhanced EIC Pilot (2019/2020), five programme managers will be appointed - each with profound expertise in their field and experience managing multidisciplinary teams. Further appointments are expected in the fully-fledged EIC in Horizon Europe (2021-2027).