Horizon Europe: Portugal raises 36 million euros in projects

Recent results from Horizon Europe, referring to the last Calls 2022 and the first Calls 2023, made it possible to raise another 36 million euros in European Research Council Calls , Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, Research Infrastructures and the Widening & ERA program, programs whose support for the national scientific community is coordinated by FCT within the context of the PERIN network.

European Research Council (ERC)

The European Research Council (ERC) has selected two proposals led by researchers working in Portugal that were on the reserve list for the 2022 Consolidator Grant and Advanced Grant Calls Pedro Leão, a researcher at CIIMAR and lecturer at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, will receive 2 million euros to strengthen research in the field of biotechnology. Pedro Leão was also funded in 2017 by the ERC under the Starting Grant. Ana Vaz Milheiro, a researcher at Dinâmia'CET-IUL and the Center for African Studies at the University of Porto, will receive 2.5 million euros to give a new dimension to her work on colonial architecture produced in the former Portuguese diaspora. Ana Vaz Milheiro is also coordinating the COST action "European Middle Class Mass Housing".

In the second Call for applications of the 2023 ERC Proof of Concept (PoC), Ana Rita Duarte, a lecturer at NOVA and a researcher at REQUIMTE, obtained funding for the project "Improve the shelf life of perishable goods through stabilization of vitamins". Ana Rita Duarte obtains her second PoC from Horizon Europe.

With these results Portugal has reached the mark of 70 million euros raised under the ERC in the first two years of Calls. In the previous Horizon 2020 framework program (2014-2020), the country raised around 150 million euros.

Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

MSCA approved 30 co-financed programs (16 doctoral and 14 post-doctoral) under the MSCA COFUND Call , 5 of which include national entities. In the MSCA Staff Exchanges Call , Portuguese institutions managed to raise €4 million. Of the total of 73 projects approved, 24 of them involve 40 national entities, and around half are from the non-academic sector.

In the MSCA Calls , Portugal has attracted around 2% of competitive funding in recent years, an increase on Horizon 2020, when the figure was 1.6%.

Research Infrastructures (RIs)

In the 2023 Calls the Research Infrastructures program, 50 projects were selected for funding. Of these, 26 projects involve 48 national partners. Two projects with Portuguese coordination stand out: Microbes-4-climate, coordinated by the University of Minho, and AQUASERV, coordinated by the Center for Marine Sciences at the University of the Algarve. In total, around 9.7 million euros of European funding has been raised by all the national entities, which corresponds to approximately 3% of the total funding allocated.

Widening & ERA (Teaming, European Excellence Initiative, COST, ERA)

In June, 70 new COST actions were selected, five of which have national coordination. Two of the national coordinators are led by ERC funding beneficiaries, Manuela Gomes and Susana Soares. The actions coordinated by Portugal are as follows:

• BEekeeping products valorization and biomonitoring for the SAFEty of BEEs and HONEY, by Andreia Freitas (INIAV);
• Randomized Optimization Algorithms Research Network, by Carlos Fonseca (CISUC, University of Coimbra);
• Exploiting Plant-Microbiomes Networks and Synthetic Communities to improve Crops Fitness, by Maria Conceição Santos (REQUIMTE, University of Porto);
• Future of plant-based food: Bridging the gap of new proteins and FLAVOURsome, by Susana Soares (University of Porto);
• TEndon Regeneration NETwork, by Manuela Gomes (i3Bs, University of Minho);

The Widening European Excellence Initiative has awarded 4.5 million euros in funding to 4 projects, two of which are coordinated by Universidade Lusófona (WIRE - Widening Innovation+Research Excellence in FilmEU) and Universidade de Lisboa (Raise excellence in R&S&I in HEI for widening countries). These projects will be developed within the framework of the European university networks FILMEU's - European Universities Alliance For Film And Media Arts, and UNITE - University Network For Innovation Technology And Engineering, respectively. This volume of funding corresponds to 8% of the total funding allocated in the Call.

Calls the consolidation of the European Research Area have funded 17 projects worth a total of 35.7 million euros. Portugal is part of 5 of these projects (raising 0.5 M€), including a project coordinated by INOVA+ on the involvement of civil society in the production of new knowledge(Curating, Replicating, Orchestrating, and Propogating Citizen Science across Europe).

The Gene Therapy CoE at the Center of Portugal (GeneT) project , coordinated by the University of Coimbra under the Call Teaming for Excellence and which was on the reserve list, was also formally approved. The University of Coimbra will benefit from a total of 13 million euros in European funding.

This project joins the two already formalized, "NOVA Institute for Medical Systems Biology" and "iMM-CARE: Boosting clinical research for the benefit of society". Together, these projects could benefit from a total of around 38 million euros in European funding over the next 6 years. In H2020, two projects were funded and are currently being implemented: BIOPOLIS (BIOPOLIS Association) and MIA-Portugal (University of Coimbra).