Research infrastructures services enabling the development of materials for a circular economy

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• enhanced and increased society’s long-term and consistent problem-solving capacity and evidence-based policy making in areas of sustainable materials and green transition, including a better understanding of socio-economic implications, through the provision of innovative, customised and efficient RI services;
• development of a world-class European research and technology ecosystem underpinning the development of materials and materials processing and the related value chains;
• optimum exploitation of R&I services relevant for materials research for a circular economy;
• enhanced competitiveness of current and emerging industries through the availability of the most advanced research and technology infrastructures R&I services;
• breakthrough research and innovation in materials development and materials processing;
• materials enabling products with increased durability and/or reusability^[1];
• cross-fertilisation and a wider sharing of knowledge and technologies across the various disciplines that contribute to materials for a circular economy;
• enhanced socio-economic impact of investments in research infrastructures from EU countries and from the European Structural and Investment Funds.

This action brings together several complementary and interdisciplinary key research infrastructures relevant for materials research and innovation for a circular economy. The facilities will provide coordinated and integrated transnational and/or virtual access to technically advanced instrumentation and scientific methods in a user-friendly way. The facilities will also jointly develop and provide specific service workflows that are relevant for the R&I activities. The services should address different TRLs and they should be relevant for stakeholders along the whole value chain and in view of possible industrial applications. The facilities will provide training for their use including for services such as materials modelling, data mining, and experiment design.

Proposals aim at supporting the provision of trans-national and/or virtual access to researchers as well as training for using the infrastructures, and activities to improve, customise and integrate the services the infrastructures provide, so as to facilitate and integrate the access procedures and to further develop the remote or virtual provision of services.

Access provision activities will also contribute to address the objectives of European initiatives, such as the Circular Economy Action Plan and the EU Strategy for Plastics in the Circular Economy, to tackle critical issues such as materials design, processing, recycling, and recovery in a cradle-to-cradle cycle.

Proposals should adhere to the guidelines and principles of the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures^[2].

Proposals should clearly identify research communities and potential industrial users, which can benefit from this pan-European open access to research services and advanced instrumentations offered by internationally renowned facilities and strengthen the cooperation among academic and industrial researchers.

Proposals are expected to take into account relevant major European initiatives, such as the Open Innovation Test Beds, to exploit synergies or to build partnerships. Whenever appropriate, they should foster the use and deployment of global standards.

Data management (and related ethics issues), interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g. data services) to the European Open Science Cloud, should be addressed where relevant.

Proposals should make available to researchers the widest and most comprehensive portfolio of research infrastructures services which are relevant for the scope. To this extent, they should involve, as beneficiaries or as third parties, the necessary interdisciplinary set of research infrastructures of European interest^[3] that provide such services. The inclusiveness of the proposal will be taken into account in the Excellence score. Proposals including only few of the research infrastructures services relevant to the scope will be scored lower.

Research infrastructures from third countries^[4] may be involved when appropriate, in particular when they offer complementary or more advanced services than those available in Europe.

Proposals should include an outreach plan to actively advertise its services to targeted research communities and, if applicable, to relevant industries, including SMEs.

Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.

Proposals will include the list of services/installations^[5] opened by research infrastructures for trans-national or virtual access and the amounts of units of access made available for users. Further conditions and requirements relating to access provisions that applicants should fulfil when drafting a proposal are given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” section of this Work Programme. Compliance with these provisions will be taken into account during evaluation. In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

[1] In line with the Circular Economy Action Plan

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/pdf/2016_charterforaccessto-ris.pdf

[3] A research infrastructure is of European interest when is able to attract users from EU or associated countries other than the country where the infrastructure is located. This includes ESFRI and ERIC infrastructures.

[4] See the Eligibility conditions for this topic.

[5] “Installation” means a part or a service of a research infrastructure that can be used independently from the rest. A research infrastructure consists of one or more installations.