I would be interested in attending such a session. --Richard On Jan 10, 2012, at 9:09 AM, Gordon Lennox wrote:

The Commission like other similar organisations has its “cycles”. Some are fairly clean-cut such as the Commission itself – the College, the 27 Commissioners. Others are overlap to an extent. This coming year is perhaps more interesting than most when it comes to our research funding. We are coming towards the end of Framework Programme 7 - FP7 - and a proposal has been developed for what should happen next - Horizon 2020.

For details on FP7:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/home

And for some information on Horizon 2020:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm?pg=h2020

A lot of the topics which have been and are being funded and which indeed may be funded are of relevance to this community – work on the “future internet” and on IPv6 to mention but two.

It ought to be useful therefore to see if people from the research side of INFSO could come to a RIPE meeting to present what has been achieved and the Commission’s proposal for the future.

If there is interest then I am sure the co-chairs can take this forward.

In the meantime - happy new year!

Gordon

Just to be clear - I do not expect to be the person making any presentation! But to clarify the sort of thing we are talking about here is a bit more detail: When I talk about the “end of FP7” it is actually a bit like us running out of IPv4 addresses. There are effectively different end points. The final-final end-date is the date after which contracts can no longer be signed for funding as agreed for the programme. But for contracts to be signed by a certain date, and no later, there are a number of steps well before then. FP7 itself ends in 2013. That means that the remaining funds have to be allocated ("committed" in our jargon) and contracts signed before then. Which probably means that the last calls may be around the end of 2012, beginning of 2013 - that gives time for call publication (against the appropriate Work Programme), consortium formation, proposal preparation, proposal submission, proposal evaluation, contract negotiation and contract signature. There are already two calls in the pipeline now. The bigger one (about 787 million) is still open and closes mid-January. Remember this amount is our contribution and so the total project volume is greater. http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/cooperation?callIdenti... I understand that there is also a slightly smaller one which will be published quite soon - mid-January? - and which will then close mid-April. There is also an on-going open call: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/cooperation?callIdenti... Other details can be found elsewhere on the web-site. One final point. People often ask me how to actually get involved. You can of course read all up on the programme, put together a consortium and simply submit a proposal. Experience seems however to indicate that it is useful to have people in any consortium who have been through the process before. There is then another way and that is to register in our database as an expert. In that way you can be called upon to participate in both proposal evaluations and project reviews. This is paid of course. Regards, Gordon