The European Innovation Council (EIC) has selected 34 projects following September 2022 EIC Transition cut-off. These successful proposals, selected among 181 eligible submissions, will receive altogether €79.3 million of EU funding (up to €2.5 million each).
The EIC Transition supports both single entities (research teams, SMEs, spin outs) and small consortia (up to 5 partners from different countries) to mature and validate their novel technologies and to develop a business case and model for the innovation’s future commercialisation. The successful participants come from 17 EU Member States and Horizon Europe associated countries.
This latest EIC Transition call included targeted funding for clean energy, green digital devices and RNA-based therapies and diagnostics for complex or rare genetic diseases technologies as well as open funding for any area of technology. Among the 34 chosen projects, there are:
- 27 under the open funding,
- 4 under “Green digital devices for the future” challenge,
- 2 under “RNA-based therapies and diagnostics for complex or rare genetic diseases” challenge,
- 1 under “Process and system integration of clean energy technologies” challenge.
Some examples of projects are:
- BIGALPS –Bio Inspired Geotechnical Applications to Launch Pan-European Solutions
BIGALPS aims at creating a market breakthrough in the soil stabilisation field by offering a unique bio-technology for soil treatment, a complete environmentally friendly solution with the capacity to treat some of the most critical soil stability problems (landslides, erosion, etc.). Bio-cementation is an innovative soil improvement technique, based on the metabolic activity of microorganisms to produce calcium carbonate that binds the soil particles together. They will mature and validate this technology to achieve full compatibility with real environment, existing norms and industry standards.
- ENABLER – Enabling next-gen hydrogen-based transport
ENABLER’s final objectives are to assemble, demonstrate and test a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) short stack – functional energy generation device – with reduced platinum content (0.3 mg Pt/cm2) and free of perfluorinated sulfonic acid (PFSA) compounds matching the performance of the recent PFSA-containing PEMFCs and, in parallel, to ensure market readiness for the technologies. The project will lay the foundation for more widespread exploitation of hydrogen power by enabling more efficient use of Pt as a critical raw material.
- TraffikGene-Tx – Targeted Peptide Carriers for RNA Delivery
TraffikGene combines modular design with high-throughput screening which will feed into AI-enhanced SAR-based predictive vehicle design. This will accelerate and de-risk nucleic acid therapeutics (NATs) drug development. The project will capitalise on the current breakthroughs in healthcare represented by NATs. RNA therapeutics (mRNA, saRNA, siRNA, lncRNA, miRNA) are now emerging and TraffikGene will deliver them to the tissues where they are needed. They aim to break new ground in the field of RNA, validate their delivery vehicles and start developing their pipeline to advance to the preclinical trial stage with therapeutic RNAs.
- SMARTWAY – Nano meta components for electronic smart wireless systems
SMARTWAY proposes novel architectures based on new paradigms that exhibit a significant decrease in energy consumption while improving on speed/performance and miniaturization. The disruptive nature of the targeted approach relies on a progress towards the wafer-scale integration of two-dimensional materials, metamaterials, and carbon nanotubes into radar sensor suitable for IoT sensing applications at both millimetre-waves (i.e., 24–60GHz) and THz frequencies (i.e., 240–300GHz). The final outcomes of the project will be two demonstrators, apt to provide industry compatible solutions for radar sensor technologies.
Background information
EIC Transition projects focus on results generated by EIC Pathfinder, FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) or European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept projects, to mature the technologies and build a business case for specific applications. Each project will receive a grant of up to €2.5 million to validate and demonstrate technology in application-relevant environment and develop market readiness.
The selected projects will have access to EIC Business Acceleration Services including coaching, mentoring, and partnering events. Projects are also eligible for the fast track scheme to access the EIC Accelerator for supporting the commercialisation and scale up phases.
Source: European Innovation Council I News (https://bit.ly/3YtKCxT)