Stairway to Excellence Cohesion Policy and the Synergies with the

Research and Innovation Funds

Example of Synergies

Nanotechnology Centre

Slovenia

Maja Bučar

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Executive Summary

The main projects covered in the case study are the Centre of Excellence (CE) in nanotechnologies, financed through Structural Funds (SF) in the period 2008-2013, FP7 project Trajectory European Research Council (ERC) Grant and the Slovenian Research Agency (SRA) national financing provided for the research group. The latter was available to the research team through the entire period, since the research group financing was available to the research team prior of obtaining the grant for the establishment of the Centre of Excellence. The grant from ERC was won successfully in part also due to the high level of research infrastructure, which was developed with the SF grant to Centre of Excellence and thus enabled the research team to get engaged in very demanding basic research. Thus the combination of financing from different sources resulted in synergy and allowed for the world class research to be conducted in the Nanotechnology Centre / Nanocenter. The work of the Centre of Excellence Nanocenter spreads however much wider and is in different intensity involved in more than 30 projects, financed from various national and European funds in total value of above €20m annually. These projects include other SRA financed projects (basic, applied and post-doctoral projects), projects with domestic and international firms as well as various EU projects. Often, the involvement of the Centre of Excellence is based on the application of the high quality research infrastructure which is available to the partners. Synergies created by the Centre of Excellence ability to combine various financing schemes opened the doors to new cooperation both at the national level (even after the financing from SF has ended, new business entities have joined the Centre of Excellence at their own cost) as well as internationally. Centre of Excellence Nanocenter today cooperates with TASC & Elettra in Italy, Joanneum Research Instititute at Univ. of Graz, Oxford University, UK, University Konstanz in Germany, University Orsay in France, Swiss Institute for technology in Lausanne and ETH from Zurich, University of Stanford, USA, National Laboratory Brookhaven, USA, etc. As a specific example of the transfer of knowledge, resulting from the work of Centre of Excellence (financed by SF) is the development of the system for optical nanolithography, Protolaser LDI. The system is the result of combined research efforts of LPKF Laser & Electronics Company, the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Ljubljana and Centre of Excellence Nanocenter. The system is now manufactured by the firm LPKF Laser & Electronics. In October 2014 the product was officially launched at the conference/fair in the USA. Already at the time two systems were sold, while according to the demand the sales of 58 systems is expected during the period 2015-2019 in total value of €6.4m. Type of synergies

Upstream

Sequential and parallel funding S&T field targeted by the synergies

Nanoscience & Nanotechnologies

Materials

Integration of nanotechnologies for industrial applications

The views expressed are purely those of the author and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission.

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1. INTRODUCTION The case presented in the following sections is one of the examples of synergies provided by the 'Stairway to Excellence' project in which different sources of funding have been combined to amplify the R&I investments and their impact on the economy and wider society. As described in the guide ‘Enabling synergies between European Structural and Investment Funds, Horizon 2020 and other research, innovation and competitiveness-related Union programmes1', synergies can be achieved through:

Sequential (or successive) funding that use funds in separate projects built on each other;

Parallel funding that use funds in separate projects complementing each other;

Simultaneous/cumulative funding that brings together Horizon2020 and ESIF funds in the same project aimed at achieving greater impact;

Alternative funding that reorients FP7/Horizon 2020 projects that were positively evaluated, shortlisted, but not funded given the limited budget, towards Structural Funds impact

The combination of sources of funding is used to address two types of activities:

Upstream activities build the appropriate capacities to perform research. They can be capacity building in physical capital (construction or improvement of research infrastructures, purchasing equipment, (including IT equipment and connections, data storage capacities), innovation infrastructures (LivingLabs, FabLabs, Design factories, etc.) and social capital (assistance for building networks, clusters and consortia).

Downstream activities are focussed towards the market and the creation of economic value. They can be applied to research, development and demonstration activities, technology transfer and adoption; technology and innovation audits to identify potential demand for RDI results; proof-of-concept funding; pilot lines for first production; and pre-commercial procurement projects. There can also be activities to support the improvement of the innovation eco-system in a territory.

1 http://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/documents/10157/267027/Guide%20on%20synergies_en.pdf

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2. CONTEXT

The Ministry for Higher Education, Science and Technology (MHEST) selected in 2009 eight Centres of Excellence for the period 2009–2013. The main goal of the instrument was to finance the

basic research and development of the selected Centres of Excellence. The government wanted to support establishment of top research facilities, where researchers from public and business sector across disciplines and institutions could work. The project costs for the formation of an individual centre of excellence were not be smaller than 3 million euro, but not larger than 10 million euro and covered the costs of research infrastructure, research programmes as well as the operation. The eligible costs for the project were determined as follows:

i. Labour costs including overheads, ii. External expertise costs, iii. Costs for disseminating information about the project, iv. Equipment costs.

Key criteria for selection were the research excellence and close cooperation with the business sector on a partnership basis. The total amount provided for co-financing was 84 million € (ERDF provides 85 %, Slovenian Government 15 %). The Nanocenter was designed to address the challenge imposed by extremely rapid development of nanotechnology & nanoscience in the world by joining together the efforts of all the leading research groups and industry leaders in the field into a consortium whose single goal was to set

up a technological research infrastructure platform for the competitive development of

nanotechnology & nanoscience in Slovenia in the next decade. The project focused on setting up state of the art synthesis, processing (nanofacturing) and characterisation research infrastructure facilities at an internationally competitive level, which enabled a diverse multitude of cutting edge research and development projects to be performed. Investment in high-tech infrastructure development was meant to facilitate a qualitative increase in competitiveness and a long-term multiplicative effect of research, since it provided for the

establishment of systematic facility support, which ensured transparent and easy access to young researchers from diverse fields in academia. The systematic education in the area of nanotechnology & nanoscience within the project was to ensure long-term cooperation, state-of-the-art science and technology and continuing knowledge-exchange on the highest level. In terms of regional context, during the programming period 2007-2013, Slovenia was considered as a single region. In the new programming period beyond 2014, Slovenia is divided into two cohesion regions at the NUTS 2 level, i.e. the more developed cohesion region Zahodna Slovenija (West Slovenia) and the less developed Vzhodna Slovenija (see details in Partnership Agreement, 2014). While the headquarters of the Centres of Excellence, financed during the previous programming period, were all located in the Zahodna Slovenia region, the partners were from both regions. This was also the case of Nanocentre: the headquarters are at Institute Jozef Stefan, Ljubljana, which is in the region West Slovenia, but five of 15 partners come from East Slovenia.

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3. IMPLEMENTATION Figure 1 maps the project chronologically, the research activities of the organisation and the type of funding. It aims to give a picture of relations between projects revealing planned or unplanned dependencies (synergies) between projects and their source of funding. Figure 1: Diagram of chronology of the main projects involved in synergies

Added value / complementarities created by the synergies The case study is based on the experience of the research team at the Institute Jozef Stefan (largest PRO in Slovenia) in the department of nanomaterials. The department was the initiator of the application for the SF funded Centre of Excellence2 in the field of nanotechnology. This provided for a significant investment in research infrastructure, which was the basis for successful application for research project with ERC. In parallel, the team was supported with the national funding through the research group programme, providing the necessary stability and relative independence due to the type of the instrument (bottom-up priority setting). The various sources of funding complemented each other well, since each provided resources for somewhat different type of costs.

Mechanisms facilitating the synergies During the analysed period, there were no formal mechanisms, which would facilitate the synergies. The strategy of the research team and their leader, who carefully constructed the activities so that they combined various sources of financing, resulted in positive synergies. On the basis of excellent research results achieved through long-term national funding, they applied to the SF call on establishment of centres of excellence. The funding provisions (ability to spend up to 90% of all funding of centre of excellence on equipment) open the door to more demanding and complex research and thus enabled candidacy for the ERC Grant. Main problems encountered in implementing the synergies To a certain extent, the national funding regulations have limited some of the possible synergies, especially the deadlines set for spending the money3. Also, the regulations with regard to double financing are still very rigid when it comes to the labour costs. None of the schemes allowed for

2 The formation of centres of excellence was one of the measures of the Ministry of Science and Technology (at the time), introduced first in Slovenian Single Programming Document for the financial perspective 2004-2006 and continued in financial perspective 2007-2010. 3 The SF funding (centres of excellence) and national funding for the research programmes, each operate according to their individual regulations. In SF case, the team had to buy the research equipment within the planned period or loose the grant, even though from the research programme perspective it would be better to wait couple of months due to a declining trend of prices of the equipment.

SF Project 1:

Centre of Excellence in nanotechnology

(10mil Euro)

FP7 Project 2: ERC Advanced Grant,

TRAJECTORY, Coherent Trajectories through Symmetry Breaking

Transitions, ERC-2012-ADG

Project 3: National Project:

SRA financed research group programme 2009-2014;

2015-2020

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the financing of the transfer of knowledge, even though this was one of the indicators applied to assess the success of the project. Suggestions to improve the synergies The key suggestion to the policy makers would be to focus on the synergies in the first place (at the design of a specific instrument) and encourage explicitly the synergies by implementing the successful methodologies, verified tools and good practices, experienced by some research teams during 2007-2013 period. The reward scheme for the participating researchers should be more flexible to allow for the additional stimulating payments to those contributing to synergies. With different interpretations of double financing experienced in the past, a development of common guidelines from the EC/ national authorities would considerably improve the motivation to seek the synergies. Improved cooperation within the administrative staff, responsible for H2020 and those, responsible for ESIF could significantly lower the bureaucracy for the research teams and encourage them to look for possible complementary projects. Main motivations in implementing the synergies Through the combination of various sources of finance the research team was able to create a high quality research environment, which now provides for a successful and stable continuation of world-class research in the area of nanotechnologies. The core research team at IJS is now in the position to act as a leading partner in new basic and applied projects both internationally and nationally. Facilitating mechanisms for the take up of the scientific results

The Institute Jožef Štefan (IJS) has a specialised Technology Transfer Office, which the researchers can use if they so decide. In the case of the particular research group, the internal connections with business partners within the Centre of Excellence were applied instead.

The Centre of Excellence organised annual research conference where major research results were presented http://www.nanocenter.si/index.php?page=promotion.

While the institute has an IPR policy, the results are mixed, since international patenting is costly and returns quite risky with unknown time-horizon. Therefore different venues of technology transfer are explored with the partners in Centre of Excellence

Impact on the regional / national economy

The investment made in research infrastructure, where highly complex research equipment was purchased through SFs established the conditions for the implementation of sophisticated international (10) and national (25) R&D projects, as well as increased cooperation with industry (12) in total value above €20m. This cooperation led to the development of new high-tech products (LT Nanoprobe & LDI Protolaser) and had major impact on science education and international brain-gain (34 doctoral & 6 post-doctoral students). Also, the synergetic effects of the funding provided new jobs both in the Centre of Excellence and in the product lines at the business partners. Research infrastructure purchased through ESIF funds improved significantly the possibilities for the applicant in H2020 calls; several projects have already been approved. Each new project resulted in an increased scientific reputation of the research team and with it also in the competitiveness of the regional economy, each new job and product was in the area of increased value added. Figure 2 aims to position projects according to the activities they cover; from upstream (infrastructures, equipment, research activities) to downstream related activities (innovation, knowledge transfer, access to market).

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Figure 2: Diagram of the complementarities of the funds in the knowledge triangle / flow

SF PROJECT: Centre of Excellence: Research infrastructure facilities, training of Ph.D. students, partnership

with business firms, transfer of knowledge 2010 - 2013

FP7 PROJECT: TRAJECTORY ERC Advanced Grant, Coherent Trajectories through Symmetry Breaking Transitions,

ERC-2012-ADG 2013 - 2018

Research (Research Infrastructures,

facilities, Research activity etc.)

Training (Continuous professional training, PhD fellowships, international mobility of

researchers, etc.)

Innovation & Technology Development

(Knowledge dissemination, knowledge transfer events, funding of the KTOs, new products and techs etc.).

NATIONAL PROJECT: Dynamics of complex nano-systems Slovenian Research Agency, research group financing

2015 - 2020

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4. RELATED PROJECTS

Name of the SF PROJECT: Centre of Excellence in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology - Nanocenter

SF funding scheme: ERDF

Budget: €10m for this Centre of Excellence; total investment for the instrument is €84m o EU contribution: 85% (Operational Programme Strengthening of the Regional

Development Potentials for the period 2007–2013; 1. Development priority: Competitiveness of companies and research excellence, co-financed from ERDF).

o Other contributors: Slovenia national funding Time frame of the SF funded project: 2010 – 2013 Weblink: http://www.nanocenter.si/en/ Main objectives: The establishment of centres of excellence had as a target the formation

of top quality multi-disciplinary research group from academic sphere as well as from business sector, combining the critical mass of knowledge and high- quality research infrastructure to support the break-through of such teams to the world-class research and/or partnerships in international networks of excellence. Primarily, the centres of excellence were to be focused on strengthening the transfer of and management of new technologies in priority areas of research & technological development..

Type of costs covered: o Research infrastructures & research equipment: 90.5% of total expenditures of the

centre of excellence; o Consumables (2.84%), o Salaries (5.5%), o Communication (0.81%) o Additional costs (0.32% )

Name of the FP PROJECT: ERC Advanced Grant, TRAJECTORY, Coherent Trajectories

through Symmetry Breaking Transitions FP funding scheme:

o Scheme: ERC-2012-ADG Advanced Grant o Subprogram: ERC-AG-PE3 - ERC Advanced Grant - Condensed matter physics o Call for proposal: ERC-2012-ADG_20120216

Budget: €1,5m Beneficiary: Jozef Stefan Institute Time frame of the FP funded project: 2013 – 2018 Weblink: http://www-f7.ijs.si/ (Reference: http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/108427_en.html) Main objectives: research project addresses the character of the trajectory taken by a

system when it traverses a phase transition. The key element of research is the development of a specific femtosecond laser spectroscopy technique, which works with a precision of one millionth of one billionth of a second. Transition trajectories to and from hidden states are of particular interest for practical applications in new femtosecond state can lead to new memory devices.

Type of costs covered: o Personnel (PI, senior staff, post-docs, students); o Other Direct Costs (Equipment depreciation, Consumables, Travel, Dissemination

and Conference), o Subcontracting (Audit, Workshop and Conference, dissemination organisation)

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Name of the nationally funded project: Dinamika kompleksnih snovi / Dynamics of

complex nano-systems (funded by Slovenian Research Agency)

National funding scheme: Research group programmes4 Budget: approximately €2.7m5 Weblink: http://www-f7.ijs.si/index.php?page=programi Beneficiary: Jozef Stefan Institute Time frame of the project: 2000- 2014 (previous period 2010-2014, total value 2.3m);

2015 – 2020 (continuation for six years) Main objectives: Research work focusing on the real time evolution of systems through

symmetry breaking transitions (SBTs) in condensed matter systems breaking different kinds of symmetries (spatial, gauge, time reversal etc.) by monitoring single particle and collective excitations has important consequences in the fundamental physics of temporally evolving systems.

Type of costs covered: o Salaries, (60%) o Consumables &short-term trainings, travel costs etc. (35%) o Other: depreciation (5%)

4 The largest share of the basic research in Slovenia is funded through so called "Research Group Programme funding" (hereafter RGPs), a system established in 1999 to secure stability in funding of the basic and applied research. The RGPs are a long-term instrument, since once a research group is selected for funding it can re-apply to all subsequent calls. The specific research team has been receiving funding on the basis of this programme since 1999 for five-year programmes. See details on Research Group Programmes on ERAWATCH Country Pages: http://erawatch.jrc.ec.europa.eu/erawatch/opencms/information/country_pages/si/country. 5 The RGPs funding is awarded in number of research hours for a period of four to six years, depending on the quality, assessed by the evaluators. The value of a research hour is set annually by the SRA.

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APPENDIX: ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

SF funded project

Project title: Center of Excellence in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology - Nanocenter

Weblink: http://www.nanocenter.si/en/ Beneficiary: Center of Excellence in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology - Nanocenter

Type of institution: Private non-profit institution (this legal form was required by the financier)

Budget: Total Investment: €10m for this CE; total investment for the instrument €84m6

EU contribution: 85%

Other contributors: National budget of Slovenia

SF/ESIF funding instrument: Financing of the establishment of 8 Centres of Excellence;

Ministry of Education, Science and Sports, Operational Programme Strengthening of the Regional Development Potentials for the period 2007–2013; 1. Development priority: Competitiveness of companies and research excellence, co-financed from ERDF.

Time frame of the project: 2010-2013

Main project objectives: The establishment of centres of excellence had as a target the formation of top quality multi-disciplinary research group from academic sphere as well as from business sector, combining the critical mass of knowledge and high-quality research infrastructure to support the break-through of such teams to the world-class research and/or partnerships in international networks of excellence. Primarily, the centres of excellence were to be focused on strengthening the transfer of and management of new technologies in priority areas of research & technological development. Specific goals (expected output)

The Nano center was designed to address the challenge imposed by extremely rapid development of nanotechnology & nanoscience in the world by joining together the efforts of all the leading research groups and industry leaders in the field into a consortium whose single goal was to set

up a technological research infrastructure platform for the competitive development of

nanotechnology & nanoscience in Slovenia in the next decade. The project focused on setting up state of the art synthesis, processing (nanofacturing) and characterisation research infrastructure facilities at an internationally competitive level, which enabled a diverse multitude of cutting edge research and development projects to be performed. Investment in high-tech infrastructure development was meant to facilitate a qualitative increase in competitiveness and a long-term multiplicative effect of research, since it provided for the

6 The Ministry for Higher Education, Science and Technology (MHEST) selected in 2009 eight Centres of Excellence for the period 2009–2013. The main goal of the instrument was to finance the basic research and development of the selected Centres of Excellence. The government wanted to support establishment of top research facilities, where researchers from public and business sector across disciplines and institutions could work. The project costs for the formation of an individual centre of excellence were not be smaller than 3 million €, but not larger than 10 million € and covered the costs of research infrastructure, research programmes as well as the operation. The eligible costs for the project were determined as follows:

(i) Labour costs including overheads, (ii) External expertise costs, (iii) Costs for disseminating information about the project, (iv) Equipment costs.

Key criteria for selection were the research excellence and close cooperation with the business sector on a partnership basis. The total amount provided for co-financing was 84 million € (ERDF provides 85 %, Slovenian Government 15 %).

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establishment of systematic facility support, which ensured transparent and easy access to young researchers from diverse fields in academia. The systematic education in the area of nanotechnology & nanoscience within the project was to ensure long-term cooperation, state-of-the-art science and technology and continuing knowledge-exchange on the highest level. So while Nanocenter had no specific goals in terms of Ph.D. fellowships or technological improvement, the evaluation of the results at the end of financing (end of 2013) showed several of such numerical results were also achieved (34 doctoral & 6 post-doctoral students regularly participated in the work of Nanocenter; 12 new R&D projects initiated with business firms, four patents submitted and 8 new innovations developed (Bučar et al. 2014). Collaborative work within the project

The scope of the project was to establish a centre for research and development of technologies in the area of nanoscience and nanotechnology with top-notch research equipment, providing space for high-quality basic and applied research of all the project partners. Project partners: PROs: Institute Jožef Štefan (IJS), National Institute of Chemistry, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics & Faculty of Biotechnology, Graduate school of IJS, companies: LPKF Laser&Electotehnika, Helios, Gorenje, Kolektor Group, Cinkarna Celje, Eta Cerkno, Steklarna Hrastnik, Balder; Private non-profit: Nanotesla institute.

Type of costs covered:

Research infrastructures & research equipment (90.5% of total expenditures of the centre of excellence);

Consumables (2.84%), Salaries (5.5%), Communication (0.81%) Additional costs (0.32% )

Main Results

The main results so far achieved by Centre of excellence Nanocenter: Purchase and installation of the research equipment as planned in the project proposal; Support provided to 25 Slovenian research projects, over 10 international projects and 12

industrial project in the value of more than €20m annually; Regular involvement of Ph.D. students (34 doctoral & 6 post-doctoral students) in work

with the available research equipment; Research results, where center’s equipment was applied, were published in over 60 papers

in internationally renowned journals, reflecting high competitiveness of research this equipment enables;

10 guest researchers from abroad only in 2014 used the CE research equipment & infrastructure;

Center of Excellence participated in 2014 in development of two products which have already entered the market (LT Nanoprobe & LDI Protolaser), expected to generate more than €6.5mn in income.

Difficulties during the implementation of the project

The template for the reporting to the financier required considerable administrative work. Each purchase of research equipment had to be implemented via public tender, which was

time-consuming and sometimes prevented the negotiation of special conditions with the selected supplier.

While initially the funding was provided on timely basis, there were some delays by the end of the financing period. The way the conditionally was set was a bit too rigid, since there was no possibility to save some of the funding approved (no cost extension clause).

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Facilitating mechanisms during the draft proposal/ implementation

The IJS where the CE had its headquarters is Slovenia’s largest PRO and thus has several offices (financing, accounting, administration) from where support could be obtained, if needed.

The research staff within the Nanocenter already had a secure funding for research work through the Research Group Financing (see section on national funding), others had funding from their original organisational unit, some funding was generated by the team of Centres of excellence on the market.

The proposal received very high grades of the international team of experts who were particularly impressed by well- designed research infrastructure to be developed within CE, enabling high quality basic and applied research. The research equipment, available at the CE now enables not only high quality research, but provides training ground for doctoral students as well as support for the industrial projects, requiring high precision instruments, available at the CE. The availability of the research equipment to the business sector results in a growing interest of high-tech industry in the work of CE.

A longer-term vision of the kind of support to be provided to CEs and the conditionality of such support would help better planning and exploitation of research equipment as well as of research work. The uncertainty as to availability and type of support for CEs affects the content and scope of their work.

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FP7 Funded Project

Name of the FP project: ERC Advanced Grant, TRAJECTORY, Coherent Trajectories through Symmetry Breaking Transitions

Weblink http://www-f7.ijs.si/ Project reference: http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/108427_en.html

Beneficiary: Jozef Stefan Institute

Type of institution PRO (largest Slovenian research institute) Budget €1,5m

FP funding instrument

Funding scheme: ERC-AG - ERC Advanced Grant Subprogram: ERC-AG-PE3 - ERC Advanced Grant - Condensed matter physics Call for proposal: ERC-2012-ADG_20120216

Time frame of the project 2013 - 2018

Main project objectives Phase transitions are a key feature of many condensed-matter systems, such as liquids and solids. They are also thought to occur in cosmological events (the Big Bang) or in elementary particle collisions. The fundamentally different phenomena found in rapid transitions have only begun to be studied in relatively recent years. This ERC project addresses the character of the trajectory taken by a system when it traverses a phase transition. The key element of this research is the development of a specific femtosecond laser spectroscopy technique, which works with a

precision of one millionth of one billionth of a second. Transition trajectories to and from hidden states are of particular interest for practical applications in new femtosecond state can lead to new memory devices. Yet equations used to model such system trajectories are similar to the ones used to describe cosmological events or elementary particles within the so-called “standard model“. Specific goals (expected output)

Project addresses the character of the trajectory taken by a system when it traverses a phase transition. Specific goals: 2 PhD Students, 2 – 3 Post doc fellows, several papers (no specific number of publications was foreseen). Collaborative work within the project Collaboration with senior researcher with world-renowned expertise on non-linear excitation and phase transitions from CNRS, Orsay, France. Hiring and training students and post-docs, co-organization of major international conference event PIPT5 2014, presentation of the project at several international scientific conferences

Type of costs covered: - Personnel (PI, senior staff, post-docs, students); - Other Direct Costs (Equipment depreciation, Consumables, Travel, Dissemination and Conference), - Subcontracting (Audit, Workshop and Conference, dissemination organisation) Main Results The project work involved 4 senior research staff, 2 post doc researchers and two students. An international conference with more than 120 participants was prepared (http://pipt5.ijs.si/), the results were presented at more than 15 international conferences, 10+ papers published in IF journals.

Reintegration of experienced scientists, post-doctoral researchers from abroad; Collaboration with senior researcher with world-renowned expertise on non-linear excitation and phase transitions from CNRS, Orsay, France)

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International exchange of know-how: Several research visits of Principal Investigator, organisation of international conference in 2014

International conferences, workshops and lectures: Number of invited speaks at international conferences

Six ISI publications.

Difficulties during the implementation of the work: No stimulation in terms of salary (Slovenia has rather rigid system of payment regulations in public sector, which has to be applied also to visiting researchers – comment by M.B., see ERAWATCH country reports for details7) Other push – pull factors that may affect the R&I performers in applying/ being

successful in FP calls The ERC criteria is very high and applications must be of excellent scientific quality, but

also highly professional. In the opinion of the grant holder, not many researchers have sufficient level of qualifications both in scientific field as well as project managers.

The research equipment which was obtained through SF project CE made it possible to compete for ERC grant (pull factor).

Disconnection from the international research community would be a limiting factor, since one has to be aware of the latest developments to be competitive with application for ERC grant. In the case of IJS application, this was not a limitation, since the head of the team is internationally highly recognised researcher.

Which were the strengths of the proposal to become successful?

Ground breaking nature, ambition, feasibility, intellectual capacity, creativity, commitment Suggestions to policy makers to facilitate the participation of national R&I performers

in H2020 Provide sufficient and timely information on the topics of calls, evaluation criteria and important details for the potential applicants. Policy makers should continue with the active support through NCPs.

Advise to R&I performers willing to apply Think outside the standard framework, applications to ERC grants need to be innovative and novel, ambitious allow for outside the box thinking. This should not be standard proposals for research financing of the kind submitted to national financing, but of a more creative, risky nature.

7 http://erawatch.jrc.ec.europa.eu/erawatch/opencms/information/reports/countries/si/report_0005?tab=reports&country=si

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National Funded Project Name of the FP project: Dinamika kompleksnih snovi / Dynamics of complex nano-systems

(funded by Slovenian Research Agency) Weblink http://www-f7.ijs.si/index.php?page=programi

Beneficiary Jozef Stefan Institute Type of institution: PRO

Budget: €2.7m

National funding instrument

Funding scheme: Research group programmes

Call for proposal: 2014 (current round)

Time frame of the project: 2015 – 2020 (continuation of the financing, the group already enjoyed financing in the period 2009- 2014.

Main project objectives The study of the real time evolution of systems through symmetry breaking transitions (SBTs) in condensed matter systems breaking different kinds of symmetries (spatial, gauge, time reversal, etc.) by monitoring single particle and collective excitations has important consequences in the fundamental physics of temporally evolving systems. Category of costs covered: primarily labour costs of the research team salaries, prescribed percentage of material costs, depreciation. Specific goals (expected output) Typically, the research group gets evaluated according to the bibliographic results of the team members. The evaluation system is prescribed by the SRA for all of the research groups. The specific research group is composed of a number of high quality researchers who successfully publish in major international scientific journals (Science, Nature, etc.) and have been among the top research groups in Slovenia. They produce approximately 20 scientific papers per year. S&T field of the project: Nanoscience Collaborative work within the project

Several visiting researchers (experienced, post-doc and PhD fellows) per year. Type of costs covered:

Salaries, (60%) Consumables &short-term trainings, travel costs etc. (35%) Other: depreciation (5%)

Main Results Since the research group is working successfully together from 1999, many important scientific results have been achieved during this time. The team is among the top research teams in Slovenia overall and in their research field. They have impressive list of publications, which include several papers in journals like Science, Nature, PRL, etc. During the last financing period the programme has introduced several new interdisciplinary technologies as well as new research areas in nanoscience, especially in the field of nano-electronics and nanolithography.

In 2009 – 2014 programme 12 experienced, post-doc and PhD fellows were visiting for more than one month

Several research visits of Principal Investigator and other team members, Organisation of international conferences, workshops; 50 abstracts presented at

international conferences were published in 2014. 20 scientific papers (ISI publications) in 2014.

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Two patents in 2014. Which were the strengths of the proposal to become successful?

As already mentioned, the research team is one of the best research groups in the country and they always achieve high scores according to SRA evaluation criteria. Their work results in a number of important scientific publications, which are the main SRA criteria. Suggestions to policy makers to facilitate the participation of national R&I performers

in national funded calls Regularly repeated calls for various types of research (on top of research programmes, also research projects and post-doctoral projects, research infrastructure financing, etc.) in line with the long-term strategy of national R&I; maintenance of level of public financing support. Advise to R&I performers willing to apply Follow the evaluation criteria. Contact for the projects:

Name, position: Dragan Mihailovic, Head of the group

E-mail dragan.mihailovic@ijs.si