Horizon 2020 is the EU's largest research and innovation program with €80 billion over 2014-2020. It aims to help innovations transition from labs to markets to benefit the public. Recent efforts include an Ebola vaccine consortium launching trials in 2015, the Marine Night project studying Arctic biodiversity changes, and Horizon 2020 supporting organic agriculture research and projects increasing water sustainability in industries. Newcastle University will lead new collaborations and education programs through EIT funding to address aging population challenges.

2. Horizon 2020
Horizon 2020 is the largest EU Research and
Innovation programme in existence, with nearly €80
billion of funding on hand over the course of 7 years
(2014 to 2020). Our initiative is to remove hurdles
between the lab and the market, to allow for a fluid
transition of innovation to the public’s access. What
follow are some of our recent endeavors in making
the world a more progressive place.

3. Ebola
Vaccine
Consortium
There have been 9,936 cases of ebola
in 2014, and 4,877 ending in death.
Thankfully, A new international
consortium,backed by the European
Commission, has been launched to
help advance research in to a candidate
vaccine against Ebola.
Funding is already helping to implement an on-going trial of an Ebola
candidate vaccine being carried out in 120 healthy adult volunteers in
Lausanne. If the safety and immunogenicity data from this and other on-
going phase 1 trials is judged as encouraging, the EU funding will enable the
consortium to begin larger phase 2 trials in Africa, which could start as early
as January 2015.

4. Marine
Night
Project
The Marine Night project delves deeper into the workings of the Arctic polar
night to study biodiversity, food chains, interaction and social processes
and how they are changing in the wake of climate change.
The primary objective of Marine Night is to
achieve a basic understanding of Arctic
biodiversity and food web structure during
the polar night, and how ecological
processes from reproduction and growth
to trophic interactions and life-history
processes during this nearly unstudied
time contribute to the functioning of Arctic
ecosystems.

5. Organic in
Horizon
2020
Responsible for passing the legislation for Horizon 2020 in the European
Parliament, the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy has been
consulting with industry experts to gauge their thoughts on Horizon 2020 and how
best to allocate funding within the individual objectives of the pillars. One
organization to give evidence was the Italian Association for Organic Agriculture,
the AIAB.
“I think Horizon 2020 can
contribute to new and useful
biotech developments, yet other
societal needs must be achieved
through agronomic ‘classic’
research, social innovation and
efficient knowledge-sharing.”
Cristina Micheloni

6. Aquafit4use
Increasing water
sustainability is a key
challenge not just for
Europe, but the entire
planet. Industry accounts
for a significant proportion of water consumption, with estimates predicting this
usage to increase by 50% between 1995 and 2025. Consequently, projects
focusing on increasing water efficiency have been a key focus for research
funding. Defined as a success story by the European Commission under FP7,
the Aquafit4Use project received over two thirds of its total project funding
from the EU. The project, which ran from January 2008 to May 2012, focused
on helping to increase water sustainability and conservation in the water-
intensive industries of paper, food, textiles and chemicals.

7. Investment
to Newcastle
University
The university has been chosen to lead new collaborations,
education programmes and projects tackling the challenges facing
society posed by an aging population. It is now working with local
firms to put together bids for EIT funding, which have to be jointly
submitted with a European partner under the new KIC known as
EIT Health.
Newcastle University is a
key partner in InnoLife, a
consortium of 144
European companies,
research institutes and
universities, selected by
the EIT to invest €80m
annually into projects
tackling demographic
change across Europe.