eap-plus.eu – STI International Cooperation Network for Eastern Partnership Countries - PLUS

The All-Ukrainian Festival of Innovation took place on May 16 at the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce. The Prime Minister of Ukraine, Mr. Volodymyr Groysman, opened the festival by emphasising the "existing innovation capacities of Ukraine, which should build an even stronger cornerstone of the country's economy in the future".

Through its partner in Ukraine, the Information Centre for Ukraine-EU S&T Cooperation (NIP), EaP PLUS was invited to the event for delivering an information day on the Horizon 2020 programme and its relevance for Ukraine.  The information day was designed as a separate slot to the overall programme and lasted from 11:00 to 16:30.

Philipp Brugner from ZSI - Centre for Social Innovation (AT) opened the info day with an introduction about Horizon 2020, its overall structure and its core objectives. Moreover, Philipp underlined the importance in applying for the remaining funds available in the current last work programme of Horizon 2020 covering the period 2018-2020 and showed where to find those remaining open calls in the new Funding and Tender Portal of the EC.

Dariusz Janusek, CEO and Co-Owner of SensoriumLab (Polish company developing a device for non-invasive and out-of-hospital pleural effusion) was invited by EaP PLUS to this info day for presenting the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument. Given his experience as an evaluator of SME Instrument proposals both in phase I and II, Dariusz was in an ideal position to provide a better understanding of this specific Horizon 2020 funding scheme among the participants.

Together, Philipp and Dariusz did a call decoding exercise as well. During this exercise, participants were strongly encouraged to share their experience in applying for Horizon 2020 funding. Both trainers stood ready for answering these questions (it turned out that there were many open questions among participants, ranging from communication to budgeting in Horizon 2020) and pointed to the most critical aspects when working with an Horizon 2020 call.

Olena Koval from NIP rounded the day off with concrete and to-the-point information about budget building and cost calculation in Horizon 2020 proposals.

Below also the presentations of the info day on May 16 are attached.