3. Aug 2016

In the frame of the final conference of the EU-funded NoGAP project, ZSI was invited to share its project experiences

On July 27, 2016, the NoGAP final conference titled "Bridging the gap between research and innovation in EU and Eastern Partnership countries (EaP)" took place in Cluj-Napoca/Romania.

The NoGAP project bridges the gap between research and innovation and contributes to taking advantage of the innovation potential of SMEs based on a better cooperation with researchers, transferring and using knowledge resulting from research. The overall objective of the project is to reinforce cooperation with Eastern Partnership countries to develop a 'Common Knowledge and Innovation Space' on the societal challenge 'secure, clean and efficient energy'.

As the NoGAP project will end soon, the final conference was meant to gather the coordinators of all INternational COoperation (INCO) projects targeting the EaP countries in the field of "Research to Innovation". The project partners from NoGAP talked about their experiences with twinning activities in the projects and presented final results and impacts. More than 50 participants from 13 countries across the European Union and the EaP copuntries attended the event.

ZSI - Centre for Social Innovation has a long-established experience in working with the EaP countries in joint Science, Technology & Innovation (STI) projects. Since almost ten years ZSI is cooperating both as a project coordinator and as project partner with the EaP region comprising the six countries Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Philipp Brugner, project manager in the Department for Research Policy & Development, shared the institute's experiences in working with the EaP region with the NoGAP conference audience. After a short introduction on the first projects implemented about eight years ago, the main part of his presentation was dedicated to ZSI's current involvement in the region. Under this aspect best practices and lessons learnt both from a thematical and administrative (project management) point of view were presented within the plenary. Currently the following STI projects coordinated by ZSI's staff in the Department for Research Policy & Development and targeting at least one of the EaP countries are in force:

Danube-INCO.NET

BLACK SEA HORIZON

IncoNet EaP

RI-LINKS2UA

Ener2i

The presentation concluded with an outlook and recommendations on how a future cooperation with the EaP countries could be shaped successfully - both from the perspective of project managers and researchers in the EU and in the EaP region and against the background of a changed funding environment under HORIZON 2020, which does not foresee the sourcing for traditional INternational COoperation (INCO) projects as such in the future.

More information on this event and all presentations you might find at NoGAP project's website.

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