European Research Council UK National

Contact PointInformation and Proposal Writing Event for the 2017 ERC Proof of Concept Grant Call

May 2017Ailidh Woodcock and Jon Brookes

Agenda14:00 Welcome and Introduction to UKRO & NCP14:05 Implications of the EU Referendum Outcome 14:10 Introduction to ERC14:15 ERC Proof of Concept Grant –

ERC Proof of Concept Grants - Objectives & ActivitiesEligibilityProject Costs & BudgetGrant Management- IPR & Open AccessEthicsEvaluation ProcessProposal Writing Further StatisticsQ&A

15.15 Tea & Coffee Break15.30 General Q&A Session16.15 Case Studies (incl. Q&A)

• Professor Subramanian, Sussex University16.50 Closing Remarks17.00 Finish

Introduction to UKRO and UK ERC NCP

• Mission:To maximise UK engagement in EU-funded research, innovation and higher education activities

• The Office:– Based in Brussels– European office of the UK Research Councils– Delivers subscription-based advisory services for around 150 research

organisations in the UK and beyond– Also provides National Contact Point services on behalf of the UK

Government

UK Research Office (UKRO)

• UKRO Portal: tailored news articles and clear and accessible web pages on the latest in EU funding

• Enquiry service: individual support through your dedicated European Advisor

• Annual briefing visits: bespoke training for your institution

• Meeting room: a venue in Brussels

UKRO subscriber services

• Provides advice on the ERC and its grant schemes

• Website: www.ukro.ac.uk/erc

• Helpdesk– Email: erc-uk@bbsrc.ac.uk– Phone: 0032 2289 6121

• Funded by BEIS

European Research Council UK National Contact Point (ERC NCP)

Implications of the EU Referendum Outcome

• The UK is still an EU Member State and continues to be until the end of the negotiations.

• This means it has the same rights and obligations as all other 27 Member States, including the participation in EU funding programmes

• Details on how the UK can participate after an exit need to be determined during the negotiations

• UK Government has a dedicated inbox for specific concerns Research@beis.gsi.gov.uk and UKRO can advise on latest developments UKRO@bbsrc.ac.uk

Facts and Points of UncertaintyPost Invoking Article 50

The Commission explicitly briefs evaluators in their guidance:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/support/expert/h2020 expert-briefing en.pdf

Commission guidance for evaluators

• The UK has formally invoked Article 50• A letter was delivered to the President of the European Council.• In the Prime Minister's statement to the UK

Parliament, Theresa May reiterated the importance of continued collaboration in research:

Article 50 Invoked: 29 March 2017

"We hope to continue to collaborate with our European partners in the areas of science, education, research and technology, so that the UK is one of the best places for science and innovation."

• An extraordinary meeting of the European Council was held on 29 April where remaining 27 states adopted a set of negotiating guidelines.

• It is too early to speculate on the timing and nature of the negotiations on UK engagement with Horizon 2020 and future funding programmes.

What happens next?

Source: European Commission

• UKRO also provides a public page and FAQ sheet on UK participation in EU funding for research, innovation and higher education.

• Aims to provide factual answers to the most common questions, both with a UK and international audience in mind.

UKRO FAQs

Introduction to the ERC

What is the ERC?

“The fundamental activity of the ERC is to provide attractive, long-term funding to support excellent investigators and their research teams to pursue ground-breaking, high-gain/high-risk research.”

“Scientific excellence is the sole criterion on the basis of which ERC frontier research grants are awarded.”

“The ERC’s frontier research grants operate on a ‘bottom-up’ basis without predetermined priorities.”

ERC Work Programme 2017

• Over the three deadlines in 2016, 160 PoC grants were awarded to current ERC PIs to investigate commercial applications of the frontier research results out of 437 submitted, giving an overall success rate of around 36.6% for the call.

• The UK total in the 2016 PoC call was 28 grants, the highest of any country, followed by Germany with 17 and Spain with 15.

Proof of Concept 2016

ERC Proof of Concept grants

Background

Objective and activities

• To maximise the value of the excellent research that the ERC funds, by funding further work to verify the innovation potential of ideas arising from ERC funded projects

• What kind of activities can be funded?

establishing viability, technical issues and overall direction market research clarifying IPR strategy Investigating business opportunities initial expenses for start-up

Aim is to bring ERC-funded ideas to a pre-demonstration stage for potential

• commercialisation opportunities or• societal benefits

Proof of Concept Objectives

• Up to a maximum of EUR 150 000 for a period of 18 months.– Although the ERC expects that normally, Proof of Concept projects

should be completed in 12 months– Given that 18 months are allowed for projects which require it,

extensions are only granted in exceptional cases

• The funding will cover activities at the very early stage of turning research outputs into a commercial or socially valuable proposition, i.e. the initial steps of pre-competitive development.

• More than one Proof of Concept Grant may be awarded per ERC funded frontier research project but only one Proof of Concept project may be running at any one time for the same ERC frontier research project.

• Have to outline the innovation potential of the idea and the expected societal and/or economic impact

Proof of Concept grants

Eligibility

Eligible Principal Investigator: • The PI has to be in an ERC frontier research that is either ongoing

or has ended less than 12 months before the opening date of the call.

• The PI is subject to resubmission restrictions (one eligible application per call)

Eligible Proposals:• Proposal complete and submitted on time• The content of the proposal must relate to the objectives and to

the grant type set out in the call• Demonstrate the relation between the idea to be taken to PoC

and the ERC research grant.

Eligible Host Institution: • In a Member State or Associated Country

Eligibility

Performed by ERCEA staff in parallel to the evaluation.

Eligible Project

Eligible Principal Investigator

Eligible Host Institution

Applicants will be informed as soon as the decision is taken

Ineligible proposals will dissapear fromthe list of proposals assigned to evaluators

Applicants can seek redress on the eligibility decision.

N.B. a proposal can be declared ineligible at any stage

Eligibility Assessment

Project Costs and Budget

• Reimbursement of up to 100% of total eligible costs:

– Direct costs: up to 100% of eligible costs– Indirect costs: flat-rate of 25% of eligible direct costs

• Information on eligible and ineligible costs on next slides and also given in detail in Article 6 of the Annotated Model Grant Agreement for Horizon 2020: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants manual/amga/h2020-amga en.pdf

Costs

• “[C]osts that are directly linked to the action implementation and can therefore be attributed to it directly.” Must not include any indirect costs.

• Examples: personnel, equipment, consumables, travel and subsistence, and publication costs

• Most costs likely to be ‘actual’:– actually incurred by the beneficiary;– incurred within the duration of the project (except costs relating to last periodic/final

report);– must be indicated in estimated budget;– must be incurred in connection with the action and necessary for its implementation;– recorded in accounts (identifiable and verifiable) and determined according to hosts’

usual cost accounting practices;– must comply with the applicable national law on taxes, labour and social security;– must be reasonable, justified and must comply with the principles of sound financial

management, in particular regarding economy and efficiency.

Direct costs

• “[C]osts that are not directly linked to the action implementation and therefore cannot be attributed directly to it.”

• To be declared as a flat-rate of 25% of eligible direct costs, excluding:– subcontracting;– costs of certain resources made available by third parties, not used on the premises

of the host institution

• Examples:– Costs related to general administration and management– Costs of office or laboratory space, including rent or depreciation of buildings and

equipment, and related expenditure such as water, heating, electricity– Maintenance, insurance and safety costs– Communication expenses, network connection charges, postal charges and office

supplies– Common office equipment such as PCs, laptops, office software– Miscellaneous recurring consumables

Indirect costs

• Costs that do not comply with eligibility conditions, in particular:– costs related to return on capital– debt and debt service charges– provisions for future losses or debts– interest owed– doubtful debts– currency exchange losses– bank costs charged by the beneficiary’s bank for transfers from the Agency– excessive or reckless expenditure– deductible VAT– costs incurred during suspension of the implementation of the action

• Also: costs declared under another EU or Euratom grant

Ineligible costs

Grant Management -IPR and

Open Access

• ‘Background’:– “any data, know-how or information — whatever its form or nature (tangible or

intangible), including any rights such as intellectual property rights — that:(a) is held by the beneficiaries before they acceded to the Agreement, and(b) is needed to implement the action or exploit the results.”

– Examples: prototypes; cell lines; patents; database rights

• ‘Results’:– “any (tangible or intangible) output of the action such as data, knowledge or

information — whatever its form or nature, whether it can be protected or not —that is generated in the action, as well as any rights attached to it, including intellectual property rights.”

– Results are normally owned by the beneficiary that generates them.

• Further information:– IPR Helpdesk– Articles 23-26 of Annotated Model Grant Agreement

IPR in ERC Grant Agreement

• Beneficiaries of ERC grants must ensure open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to its results. They must:

– Deposit a machine-readable electronic copy of the published version or final peer-reviewed manuscript in a repository for scientific publications as soon as possible.

– Ensure open access to the deposited publication at the latest:

• on publication, if an electronic version is available for free via the publisher (gold open access), or

• within six months of publication (twelve months for publications in the social sciences and humanities) in any other case (green open access).

• The ERC Scientific Council recommends subject-specific repositories:– Life Sciences domain: Europe PubMed Central (http://europepmc.org)– Physical Sciences and Engineering domain: arXiv (http://arxiv.org)– Other long-text publications: OAPEN Library (http://oapen.org)– If there is no appropriate discipline specific repository, researchers should make

their publications available in institutional repositories or in centralised ones, e.g. Zenodo (http://zenodo.org).

• Open Access costs should be budgeted for when submitting the application

Open access: publications

• Open research data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. • Participating beneficiaries must take the following steps to ensure open access:

– Deposit research data repository needed to validate the results presented in scientific publication, including associated metadata, in a repository as soon as possible.

– Take measures to enable third parties to access, mine, exploit, reproduce and disseminate (free of charge for any user) their research data, including associated metadata.

– Provide information via the chosen repository about tools available in order for the beneficiaries to validate the results e.g. specialised software or software code, algorithms and analysis protocols. Where possible, these tools or instruments should be provided.

• Beneficiaries of the ERC projects have to formulate a Data Management Plan (DMP):

– a brief plan to define what data sets the project will generate or process, whether and how these data will be made accessible, and how they will be curated, stored and preserved.

– the DMP should also provide information on the measures taken to safeguard and protect sensitive data.

– Further information:– Open Access Guidelines for research results funded by the ERC– Article 29 of Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Open access – Research Data

Ethics in the ERC application

• Section 4 of the administrative forms- Ethics issues table

• Ethics Self-Assessment Annex (only if answered ‘Yes’ to any questions on ethics issues table)

– Brief explanation of the ethical issue(s) involved & how it will be dealt with – You may include supporting documentation, such as authorisations already received.

(Not counted in page limit)

• The main areas that are addressed during the ethics review process include:– Human protection (including study participants and researchers)– Animal protection and welfare– Data protection and privacy– Environment protection– Participation of non-EU countries– Malevolent use of research results

• The ethics review process consists of:– Three steps take place before the conclusion of grant preparation:

i. Ethics Pre-Screeningii. Ethics Screeningiii. Ethics Assessment

– A fourth step takes place, after the signature of the grant agreement, during the lifetime of the selected projects:

iv. Ethics Monitoring

Ethics review process

• Ethics Pre-Screening – All proposals recommended for funding will undergo an Ethics Pre-Screening performed by the ERCEA ethics team where the proposals which can be cleared for granting are identified

• Ethics Screening – All the proposals where potential ethical issues have been identified have to undergo an Ethics Screening,– carried out soon after the scientific evaluation and concerns only

proposals shortlisted for funding. – Each proposal will be screened by at least three independent ethics

experts or the ERCEA– The possible outcomes of the ethics screening process are:

1. The proposal is "ethics-ready" and therefore receives ethics clearance

2. Conditional clearance3. The proposal must proceed to Ethics Assessment

Ethics review process (cont.)

• Ethics Assessment – an in-depth analysis of the ethical issues.– Proposals involving the use of Human Embryonic Stems Cells (hESCs)

automatically undergo an Ethics Assessment. – carried out by a panel consisting of at least three independent ethics

experts– The possible outcomes of the ethics assessment process are:

1. The proposal is "ethics-ready" and therefore receives ethics clearance

2. Conditional clearance3. The proposal must proceed to a second ethics assessment

Ethics review process (cont.)

Evaluation

• ERCEA publishes the call on the Participant Portal which includes:

– Work Programme– Information for Applicants– Templates – Part B and HI letter– Frequently Asked Questions

• ERC grant holders are allowed to submit only one eligible application per Work Programme (year).

• By cut-off date, ERCEA collects all submitted proposals

• The proposals are allocated by the call coordination to the experts:– 5 reviews/proposal compulsory– no discussions between reviewers/

remote evaluation

• A complete proposal must have:– Administrative data– Part B ( 7 pages + budget table)– Host Institution Support Letter– Additional documents: Annexes if

necessary.

Reception of proposals at ERCEA

• Individual reviewing consists of:

I. Awarding a pass/fail mark for each of the evaluation criteria

II. Providing a succinct explanatory comment substantiating each mark. Comments should take the form of a statement and explanation of key strengths and key weaknesses of the proposal, in the light of the evaluation criteria.

Scoring and comments

• If there is not enough budget to fund all the proposals which pass all three evaluation criteria, those proposals which pass all three evaluation criteria will be sorted by:

1. the number of pass marks awarded by peer reviewers to criterion 1 (Excellence - Innovation potential);

2. then by the number of pass marks awarded to criterion 2 (Impact); 3. then by the number of pass marks awarded to criterion 3 (Quality and

efficiency of the implementation).

• Proposals will be funded in order of the ranking resulting from this 3-level sorting exercise until depletion of the available budget per evaluation round.

Ranking

• If there is a group of equally ranked fundable proposals that crosses the budget cut off line:

All the experts involved in the evaluation of at least one proposal in this group will be sent the reviews of all the proposals in the group. They will then examine all the proposals in the group and the existing reviews, and decide on their own personal ranking.

The ERCEA will compile a sub-ranking within the group taking into account the CoI, and will then come up with an overall final ranking list.

• After the evaluation, all the experts will have to confirm by sending an e-mail that they agree with the results of the evaluation.

• Only in the case a consensus cannot be reached, the ERCEA can call for a panel meeting in order to discuss the ranking order of the proposals.

Ranking (cont.)

• Applicants are informed of the results of the evaluation:• Status of their proposal (Retained, Reserve list,

Rejected, Failed)• Scores (pass/ failed) and comments

• Any Ethical issues

• Granting – N.B Requested amounts may be modified!

Final results – feedback to applicants

Selection of PoC Evaluators

• The selection of experts is done by the Scientific Council

• There is only one pool of experts responsible for the evaluation of the proposals, regardless of their originating Scientific Domain

• Experts DO NOT evaluate Science

• At the end of the call, the list of experts is made public via the ERC website

Profile of the PoC evaluator

o building/commercialising IPRs;

o developing technologies through proof-of-concept and prototype stage and in licensing onwards to a wide variety of industry sectors;

o identifying, protecting and evaluating the commercial potential of (basic) research;

o providing investment to support the early stages of business formation out of research in the public sector science base.

o management of tech transfer from research through practical use;

o working with academics to deliver research collaborations, exchange know-how, license new technologies and create new business ventures;

o developing innovative technologies from public (and private) sources, turning ideas into patented, scientifically validated and licensable technologies;

• Experts in knowledge transfer with experience in:

Proposal Writing

http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/erc-2017-poc.html

How to write a good PoC proposal

• Read the reference documents carefully:• Work programme• Information for applicants document (everything can

be found on the participant portal)

• Talk to existing PoC grantees in your institution:• Did they get external help?• Why were they not successful at the first attempt?• Consider consulting the list of PoC Grantees published

on ERC website.

Part B1 Excellence - Tips

• State the expected output of you project• Why is your proposal innovative?

• If you are going to improve a product, method, process…. how will you do it?

• In a concise manner, mention how it is done today and how your project will do it better.

• Do you know the state of the art in the industry sector? - Find out!

Part B2 Impact - Tips

• Answer the first three questions (Compulsory):– Impact: who will benefit form your idea? Why? Name your

final users– Generation of financial of social profit: You are not expected

to know how much profit you will made, but at least a process should be indicated…. prove that you have been thinking about it!

– Market research: PoC will provide funding for further market research, but an idea on how this will be carried on, is important. Know your competitors!

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• Present the plan while having in mind the technical and the commercial needs.

• Write a management plan and do not forget to mention the risk and contingencies.

• Don't waste too much space on CVs. • Justify the budget items.

• Subcontracting in PoC is allowed. Give names of subcontractors (they will be deleted later but are important for the evaluation).

Part B3 PoC Plan - Tips

• Invest some time on your idea. If you have a good idea with good innovation potential, the plan can be modified.

• Take a look at the market, try to identify beforehand the competitors and who will benefit from it.

• Experts also expect external help e.g. from Business.• Restrictions apply - One proposal a year.

General Tips

Further Statistics on PoCGrants

• Participant Portal • PoC-2017 call • Information for Applicants for the PoC-2017 call• 2017 ERC Work Programme• ERC website

– statistics on funded projects– funded projects– Proof of Concept Grants: including link to Panel information for calls

Useful Links

Thank you, Any questions?