The 1^st Clim4Vitis webinar “Horizon Europe – Opportunities for Researchers” was held on 30^th June 2020. The webinar had more than 50 registered participants from several universities and research institutes.

The main aim of the webinar was to provide an overview of Horizon Europe focused on the researchers. Furthermore, an overview of Clim4Vitis project and the main outcomes were presented.

The summary of the session contents is presented below:

Clim4Vitis Overview

Susana Figueiredo, a consultant from SPI, presented an overview of the project including the main objectives, structure and outcomes. The objectives of this twinning project were mentioned and also the different workpackages. Besides that, the outcomes related with the scientific knowledge, twinning activities, outcomes and impacts were introduced. The consortium composed by several partners from different European countries was presented. In particular, UTAD, as a coordinating institution, and SPI (Portugal), LIST (Luxembourg), University of Florence (Italy) and PIK (Germany).

To finalize the presentation, the main results of the projects were shown, such as climate model simulations, relevant publications, scientific communications, Clim4Vitis weeks and dissemination & outreach activities.

General Overview of the Horizon Europe Programme

The main topic of the session was presented by Francisco Rocha, a consultant from SPI with high experience in international projects.

The first part of the presentation was dedicated to a brief introduction to Horizon Europe Programme. In this section, the main objectives of HE were explained and also the timeline and a comparison between this Programme with previous Programme (Horizon 2020). After this brief introduction, the session focused on the objective of the different pillars, the budget allocated and the types of actions for each pillar.

Afterwards, several practical tips and recommendations for developing a proposal were given. In order to prepare a proposal, SPI developed a structure for developing a proposal based on the experience over the years. The scheme was presented with the key steps to get until the proposal submission which include the following:

• Identifying an opportunity – information on calls, documents and templates relevant to access;
• Reading relevant support materials;
• Development as a coordinator or as a partner – presentation of the advantages and disadvantages from each position; tips on how to decide on being a coordinator or a partner;
  • On Coordinator side the following tips were given: start by developing and idea an put together a short summary of the project; get in touch with the national contact points (NCP); and set-up the consortium (tips on building the right consortium).
  • On partner side the next steps should be followed: prepare a profile adapted to the call with the main competences specific for the call and later identify a consortium (tips were given).
• Proposal writing and submission (coordinator) or contribute to the elaboration and submission of a proposal (partner).

To conclude the presentation, general tips on responding to a call were provided, as well as a timeline for preparing a proposal, general admissibility conditions, evaluation criteria and key principles.

The webinar was followed by Q&A session in which the participants were invited to raise topics for discussion and their doubts were clarified.

The webinar presentations can be downloaded below:
Clim4Vitis H2020 presentation (pdf)
Horizon Europe presentation (pdf)