Horizon Europe: Portugal secures an additional €36 million in projects

Recent results from Horizon Europe, referring to Calls last Calls 2022 and the first calls of 2023, have enabled us to secure an additional €36 million in Calls the European Research Council, 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 Calls 2022 Calls Grant and Advanced Grant Calls . Pedro Leão, a researcher at CIIMAR and professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, will receive €2 million to strengthen research in the field of biotechnology. It should be noted that 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 in funding to give a new dimension to her work on colonial architecture produced in the former Portuguese diaspora. Ana Vaz Milheiro also coordinates the COST action "European Middle Class Mass Housing."

In the second round of applications for Call ERC Proof of Concept (PoC) Call , Ana Rita Duarte, professor at NOVA and 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 in Horizon Europe.

With these results, Portugal has reached the milestone of €70 million 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.

Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

The MSCA approved 30 co-funded programs (16 doctoral and 14 postdoctoral) under the Call COFUND Call , of which 5 include national entities. In Call Staff Exchanges Call , Portuguese institutions managed to secure €4 million. Of the total of 73 projects approved, 24 involve the participation of 40 national entities, and about half represent the non-academic sector.

In Calls , Portugal has captured around 2% of competitive funding in recent years, an increase compared to Horizon 2020, where the figure stood at 1.6%.

Research Infrastructures (RIs)

In Calls 2023 Calls of the Research Infrastructure program, 50 projects were selected for funding. Of these, 26 projects involve 48 national partners. Two projects coordinated by Portugal stand out: Microbes-4-climate, coordinated by the University of Minho, and AQUASERV, coordinated by the Marine Sciences Center at the University of Algarve. In total, approximately €9.7 million in European funding was secured by all 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 are coordinated nationally. Two of the national coordinators are led by ERC grant recipients, Manuela Gomes and Susana Soares. The actions coordinated by Portugal are as follows:

• Valorization of beekeeping products 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 Crop Fitness, by Maria Conceição Santos (REQUIMTE, University of Porto);
• Future of plant-based food: Bridging the gap of new proteins and FLAVORsome, by Susana Soares (University of Porto);
• Tendon Regeneration NETwork, by Manuela Gomes (i3Bs, University of Minho);

Call European Excellence Call awarded €4.5 million in funding to four projects, two of which are coordinated by Lusófona University (WIRE – Widening Innovation+Research Excellence in FilmEU) and the University of Lisbon (Raise excellence in R&S&I in HEI for widening countries). These projects will be developed within the scope 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 amount of funding corresponds to 8% of the total funding awarded in Call.

Calls to the consolidation of the European Research Area funded 17 projects totaling €35.7 million. Portugal is involved in five of these projects (receiving €0.5 million), including a project coordinated by INOVA+ on the involvement of civil society in the production of new knowledge (Curating, Replicating, Orchestrating, and Propagating Citizen Science across Europe).

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

This project joins the two already formalized projects, “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 in European funding over the next six years. Two projects have been funded under H2020 and are currently being implemented: BIOPOLIS (BIOPOLIS Association) and MIA-Portugal (University of Coimbra).