At its 53rd meeting yesterday, EMBL Council selected Edith Heard as the organisation’s fifth Director General. Heard’s mandate is scheduled to begin 1 January 2019. Hungary has recently become a full member state in Europe’s leading laboratory for the life sciences.

After visiting seven Hungarian university towns and London, the roadshow of the Startup Campus launched with the support of the NRDI Office was finished in Berlin. In his opening presentation at the event, József Pálinkás, President of the NRDI Office highlighted the development achievements of the domestic innovation ecosystem and also told about the concept of the Campus Budapest multifunctional community centre to be launched at the Millenáris area, Budapest.

Over EUR 140 million in funding has been awarded to Hungarian institutions and businesses so far in Horizon 2020, the EU’s framework programme for research and innovation. On an event organised by the NRDI Office, József Pálinkás highlighted success rates, achievements and forthcoming actions within the H2020 programme, while previous winners and evaluating experts also shared their experience with potential applicants.

Diplomats responsible for Central Europe delegated by the foreign ministries of Asian countries were informed about the common, recently concluded or ongoing RDI funding programmes by the President of the NRDI Office. Projects in Asian countries are expected to benefit from a total budget of HUF 1 billion (EUR 3,3 million) on the basis of 2016 and 2017 funding decisions in relation to the programmes facilitating bilateral scientific and technological cooperation.

Financing competitive salaries of researchers from Horizon 2020 grants is a serious challenge to publically financed research centres. In representation of the interests of domestic institutions and in cooperation with the other Member States concerned, the National Research, Development and Innovation Office has urged the European Commission to find a solution to this problem, and finally the accounting rules are now expected to be modified.

The Hungarian researcher community gains access to Europe’s leading biomolecular infrastructure and further training programmes as Hungary confirmed its intent to join in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), thus becoming the 23rd full member state in the continent’s largest life science organisation.

In 2016, more than HUF 3 billion (EUR 10.5 million) was allocated by the NRDI Office to cover the costs of participation in large research infrastructures, including the investment of EUR 2.2 million for the ongoing project of the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (European XFEL). Two Hungarian research teams at the Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences are eager to become one of the first users of the facility.

The AAL Call 2017 is now open for project proposals aimed at the innovative integration of existing ICT solutions or the development of new ones to support the ambient assisted living of the older adults. Representatives of the joint financed programme, from the European Commission and the participating countries including Hungary, held a two-day meeting on 9–10 April at the NRDI Office in Budapest, on the financial and coordination tasks of this year’s call and further directions of the programme.

In connection with Horizon 2020 calls, this year the NRDI Office organises more than 20 thematic information days and consultation events to facilitate the participation and success rate of domestic stakeholders in the competition for EU funds. At these events the experts of the NRDI Office provide information and practical advice, and they are also ready to answer questions arising throughout the application process. They also encourage sharing experience of others gained from previous applications, which are all useful and essential for a successful application in the competition for directly accessible European funds.

Sustainability, marketable ideas, own innovation funds, long-term budget planning. These are the pillars on which domestic businesses should build their applications for RDI funds, primarily because from 2020 the focus will shift from the current abundance of domestic sources to EU funds that can be won in international competition – said Zsolt Monszpart, Vice President for Innovation and General Affairs of the NRDI Office to Portfolio.hu at the EU Funds 2017 thematic conference. To make this trend clear to stakeholders, the NRDI Office invited to the conference the heads of some of the domestic businesses which successfully applied for funding under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme. They gave an account of their experience at a round table discussion, explaining how their funded H2020 projects boosted their business and interconnected them to the global market.

The Vice President for Innovation and General Affairs of the NRDI Office made a presentation on the support of the innovative businesses in the Hungarian energy sector, the comprehensive system fostering R&D cooperation projects and opportunities of funding, at a conference organised by the Budapest Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

József Pálinkás held talks on scientific relationships and cooperation between research institutions in Paris.

Post-communist central and eastern Europe still lags western Europe on the quality of its science and innovation outputs, according to six indicators collected by the European Commission. The gap may be persistent, but it does not appear to be widening. Investors are beginning to uncover more and more opportunities in CEE and east-west venture capital investment rates seem to be converging.

The projects "Danube-INCO.NET", "JPI Urban Europe" and "EXPAND" are organising a joint workshop aiming at widening the participation in the JPI Urban Europe, exchanging on urban challenges and to matching JPI Urban Europe with the national and regional funding strategies and priorities of Danube Region as well as EU-Widening countries on 24 March 2017.

Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, handed over a €1 million Horizon Prize for Better Use of Antibiotics, and Vytenis Andriukaitis, Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, delivered the EU Health Award for NGOs fighting Antimicrobial Resistance, at an award ceremony hosted by the University of Leuven in Belgium.

The European Commission and the European Investment Fund (EIF) have started selecting promoters of one or more private-sector led, market-driven Pan-European Venture Capital Funds-of-Funds. 17 applications were submitted by the 31 January 2017 deadline

Attracting more top global companies and boosting investment in defence are among the main avenues the European Commission could investigate as it lays the ground for a successor to Horizon 2020, according to a report examining ways of maximising the impact of EU research and innovation programmes.

Nuclear scientists have become the first to face up to the hard realities of what Brexit means for UK/EU research cooperation - and their future careers - following the announcement that Britain is to pull out of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) when it leaves the EU.

RIs are of utmost importance for Europe’s global competitiveness. Science Europe has published its contribution to the review of the positioning of Research Infrastructures (RIs) in Horizon 2020 and in future Framework Programmes.

Paul Nurse, geneticist who received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Director of the UK’s Francis Crick Institute, will be joining the EU’s Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) in March.