engleski

Showcase for material science R&D at FCET for increasing participation in EU funding schemes

Faculty hosts several smaller younger research groups which already developed high national prominence. Reaching out to EU level of prominence proved difficult primarily due to lack of wider participation in the EU funding schemes. That however proved primarily to be the consequence of limited development of Croatian research infrastructure. Therefore, for a Croatian applicant getting an ERC grant is hardly possible, because the EU basically presumes that you have the necessary infrastructure, and does not really care is your origin is systematically lagging behind. During the whole ERC program, 2 ERC starting grants (from the cca 7000 ERC grants 2007–2022 in PE) were received in Croatia, to prove my point. The ideas behind the research activities of the prominent groups from FCET focus broadly between the fundamental phenomena and tasks resolving the state-of-the-art and beyond technical challenges. Again the bottlenecks are found within instrumental requirements. My idea is to present the interesting expertise from the FCET in terms of specific, and novel synthesis, deposition, characterisation and testing setups. On behalf of bilateral or even multilateral communication of should be possible to elucidate overlap of interest and identify opportunities to resolve issues. Provided the meeting raises awareness on the suitable EU finding program, in conclusion it should be possible to foster increased participation in such funding by Croatian researchers as well. The things to consider for fostering greater utilisation of EU funding are broadening of infrastructure, utilisation of their access, keeping up with the maintenance, managing administration and the burden of bureaucratic necessities, etc. Particularly interesting would be to participate in specific ambitious work environment such as networking sessions to maximise the collaboration opportunities. As a consequence, excellent researchers with high driving force should have more easy time to remain in Croatia and continue building their groups without the fear of reaching the (now obvious) participation limits.

material science ; R&D ; EU funds ; green deal

nije evidentirano