JTC2023 Call announcement

* Last updated on May 26, 2023 (update of DFG annex)

The national and regional research funding organisations in FLAG-ERA join the agenda of two large-scale European initiatives: Graphene Flagship and Human Brain Project – EBRAINS.  The present call aims at supporting the integration of the respective national and regional research communities into the European-wide effort that they represent. Building on ten years of outstanding collaboration, the objective is to leverage on the initiatives’ achievements and evolutions to look to the future under the renewed context of Horizon Europe:

• The Graphene Flagship  will benefit from a  continued and significant support  of the European Commission.
• Human Brain Project – EBRAINS  is evolving towards a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC).

Both initiatives, launched in 2013 as FET Flagships, address grand and multidisciplinary scientific and technological challenges, built around an ambitious unifying vision. Their overarching nature and magnitude imply that they can only be realised through a federated and sustained effort.

In this context, FLAG-ERA, the ‘Flagship ERA-NET’, gathers national and regional funding organisations in Europe and beyond with the goal of supporting, together with the European Commission, these initiatives and their research areas: Graphene and 2D materials and computational neurosciences.

Please read the official FLAG-ERA JTC2023 Call Announcement.

A summary of the main call features is provided below.

Research areas

The call is divided into three sub-calls. Two sub-calls support Graphene Flagship and one sub-call Human Brain Project – EBRAINS. The two sub-calls supporting Graphene Flagship correspond to different approaches. Indeed, in order to translate graphene and 2D materials known effects and concepts into technological applications, a sub-call on applied research and innovation is organised in addition to one on basic research laying down foundations for future graphene and 2D materials technologies. The sub-call supporting Human Brain Project – EBRAINS targets both basic and applied research projects.

Participating NRFOs and contact information

The table below provides the list of funding organisations participating to the call. Note that the list of participating organisations depends on the sub-call. Total call budget is approx. 9-10 M€.

Country		Funding organisation	Graphene Flagship (basic research)	Graphene Flagship (applied research and innovation)	Human Brain Project – EBRAINS (basic and applied research)	Contact
BE	Belgium	FNRS	Yes	No	Yes	international@frs-fnrs.be
BG	Bulgaria	BNSF	Yes	Yes	Yes	Milena.Aleksandrova@mon.bg
EE	Estonia	ETAg	Yes	No	Yes	Margit.Suuroja@etag.ee
FR	France	ANR	Yes	Yes	Yes	Lina.Bentakouk-Bernard@anr.fr
DE	Germany	DFG*	Yes	No	No	Michael.moessle@dfg.de Martin.Winger@dfg.de
IL	Israel	InnovationAuth*	No	Yes	Yes	Dan@iserd.org.il
LT	Lithuania	LMT	Yes	Yes	Yes	Saulius.Marcinkonis@lmt.lt
NL	The Netherlands	ZonMw	No	No	Yes	Jpnd@zonmw.nl
RO	Romania	UEFISCDI	No	Yes	Yes	Cristina.Cotet@uefiscdi.ro Domnica.Cotet@uefiscdi.ro
SK	Slovakia	SAS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Panisova@up.upsav.sk
SI	Slovenia	MIZS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Andrej.Ograjensek@gov.si
SE	Sweden	VINNOVA	No	Yes	No	Maria.Ohman@vinnova.se
SE	Sweden	VR	Yes	No	No	Tomas.Andersson@vr.se
TR	Türkiye	TUBITAK	Yes	Yes	Yes	ebru.aydin@tubitak.gov.tr
TW	Taiwan	NSTC	Yes	Yes	Yes	cmtom@nstc.gov.tw

* Participation pending confirmation

Eligibility

Consortia must be international. They must involve at least 3 eligible and independent partners requesting funding to organisations in the call from 3 distinct countries.

Consortia must be balanced. The maximum requested funding allowed per country in a proposal is 60% of the total requested funding of the proposal.

Research groups who are not eligible to receive funding by an organisation participating in the call but are willing to collaborate and contribute to the proposed project may be part of a consortium if they are able to secure their own funding. Third-party funding is not considered for the application of the above-mentioned balance rule.

The consortium coordinator must be a partner requesting funding (and be eligible for funding) from an organisation participating in the call.

In order not to jeopardize the whole consortium, each partner in the consortium should ensure that no doubts exist about the eligibility of their entity, the eligibility of their PI and their eligible costs. It is important to note that some funding organisations require that eligibility of partners is checked with them prior to applying. It is also important to be aware that some funding organisations request the submission of an application at the national or regional level in parallel to the transnational submission, and that failing to submit the national application makes the partner ineligible. It is the responsibility of the coordinator to ensure that all necessary checks have been done before submitting.

Evaluation & Selection

JTC 2023 follows a 1-stage evaluation and selection process. The evaluation and selection processes are independent of the Graphene Flagship and Human Brain Project – EBRAINS initiatives. Proposals are assessed and ranked by independent international scientific evaluation panels. There are three different panels, one for each sub-call.

The evaluation criteria are the following:

1. Relevance to the Topic: Relevance of the project with respect to the topic description
2. Excellence: Scientific and/or technological quality
   • Soundness of the concept, and quality and pertinence of the objectives
   • Quality and effectiveness of the methodology, reproducibility of the results
   • Expected progress beyond the state-of-the-art
   • Originality and novelty of ideas
3. Implementation: Quality and efficiency of the implementation and management
   • Quality of the work plan, appropriateness of allocation and justification of requested resources (staff, equipment…) and of data management
   • Appropriateness of the management structure and procedures
   • Quality and added value of the consortium (complementarity, balance, etc.); quality and relevant experience of individual participants
   • Identification of risks (incl. possible ethical issues) and mitigation plan
4. Impact: Potential impact through the development, dissemination and exploitation of results
   • Contribution to the expected impacts mentioned in the topic description
   • Potential to transform research results into innovations with societal, industrial and economic impact at the European and/or international level
   • Appropriateness of measures for the dissemination and/or exploitation of project results (incl. data and means to reproduce results) in line with the Open Science policy, and management of intellectual property
   • Communicate the project to different target audiences

Each criterion is scored between 0 and 5. Proposals that do not reach a score of 3 in each of the above criterion are rejected.

The total score for a proposal is weighted average of the scores for the three individual criteria. The weights are as follows:

	Graphene		HBP
	Basic research	Applied research and innovation	Basic and applied research
Relevance to the Topic (threshold 4/5)	25%	25%	25%
Excellence (threshold 3/5)	30%	20%	25%
Implementation (threshold 3/5)	25%	25%	25%
Impact (threshold 3/5)	20%	30%	25%

JTC2023 Timeline

Links to relevant documents

To learn more on the topics, eligibility criteria and the submission of proposals to the JTC2023, please consult the FLAG-ERA JTC2023 Call Announcement.

A JTC 2023-Partner(s) Search Tool for submitting Expressions of Interest (EoI) is currently open. Consult all the JTC 2023 EoI.

FLAG-ERA JTC2023 information Webinar: March 16, 2023 – 10-11.30 am CET

• FLAG-ERA JTC 2023 – Presentation
• EBRAINS – Presentation

To prepare your proposal, use the FLAG-ERA JTC2023 Proposal Form.

To help you through the submission process, please consult the FLAG-ERA JTC 2023 Submission Guidelines.

Submission

The links to the submission website are:

• Graphene (basic research)
• Graphene (applied research and innovation)
• HBP (basic and applied research)