On 23 June 2017 the Research WG had its second meeting of the year.
Currently composed by 30 members from both industry and academia, the Research WG aims to promote in silico medicine in EU research policy, acting as a consultative group that will provide technical/detailed scientific inputs into policy and fostering mutually beneficial links between Avicenna industry members and VPHi members.
The group had its second meeting of the year on 23 June. On the agenda for the day a number of important issues, such as:
The draft version of the upcoming H2020 WP already includes a number of calls that are in silico focused and that could of interest for the VPH community, offering concrete funding opportunities. In addition, the EC specifically pointed out that in silico is expected to be one of the basic tools that could be use to respond to any health related calls. This is a very successful outcome that reflects the hard work sustained by the VPHi over the past years.
In the near future the WG proposed to focus on the creation of ready-made consortia with both industry and academic members to respond to the upcoming calls. The VPHi website is currently getting updated to include information on members’ expertise and past projects to facilitate the consortium creation process.
As the Commission is working on the current structure of the upcoming FP9 research framework, the WG members shall now work on the implementation of a strategy to raise the profile in silico medicine, possibly reaching across different DGs (not only DG Connect) and exploring alternatively strategic areas of research.
The FET Flagship call has reopened and by 2020 the EC will finance one or two big FET Flagships projects like Graphene. This is a two phase approach. In the first phase, 5 to 6 CSAs will be granted 1 million for 1 year to put together a full proposal for a FET Flagship. In phase 2, out of these proposals 1 or 2 projects will be selected and financed. The CSA call will be published in the Summer with deadline 20 Feb 2018. By the end of the 2018, the Commission should have selected the CSAs, so the full FET Flagship proposal shall be finalised in a year time, roughly at the end of 2019. The VPHi, lead by Lies Geris, is working to put together a CSA proposal on aging. Currently a small group is working on the proposal skeleton, and in the summer, as soon as a strategy will be identified, different groups will be contacted to widen up the participation.
The group will now collect inputs and ideas on the various discussed topics, and will meet again in Sept/Oct to bring the work to the next level. We will keep you posted on future developments.
The activities of the the Research WG are open to all VPHi and Avicenna members. In case you're interested to join please contact theVPHi manager
Further information can be found here
