The KIOS Research Center at the University of Cyprus and Imperial College London, a world-leading institution in research and innovation, have received a grant from HORIZON 2020 under the TEAMING call to develop a Center of Excellence in the area of Intelligent Systems and Networks. The KIOS-Imperial Teaming proposal was one of 31 proposals selected (out of 169 submitted) from across the EU. The proposal was ranked 1st amongst the ICT proposals and 5th in the overall ranking. It is a significant privilege for the KIOS Research Center to be selected.
The funding call TEAMING is part of EU’s strategic program “Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation”. This is a specific program introduced under Horizon 2020 (the EU Research and Innovation program for 2014-2020), to respond to the significant internal disparities in terms of research and innovation performance amongst the member states of the EU. The aim of the “Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation” program is to introduce specific measures to help low-performing Member States, such as Cyprus, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, etc., to improve their research and innovation performance. The specific aim of the ‘Teaming’ project is to prepare a business plan for a Center of Excellence by creating partnerships between internationally leading institutions from high-performing Member States, in terms of research, and institutions from low-performing Member states with the most potential to pursue excellence.
The KIOS Research Center is now working hard, in collaboration with Imperial College London, for the preparation of the business plan for the proposed Center of Excellence. The ultimate goal is to participate in the second phase of funding under the TEAMING call, which will be available to a number of the Phase 1 participants, following a competitive assessment by an international expert panel of all submitted business plans. The highest ranked proposals will be provided with further substantial financial support for the start-up and implementation phase for Centers of Excellence in Europe. Should KIOS succeed in moving to Phase 2, this would be a significant achievement for the KIOS Center as well as for Cyprus in terms of technology development and economic growth. This is also clearly pointed out on the web page for the program, where the Commission states that ‘there is significant evidence pointing to the fact that the pathway to economic growth and competitiveness is strongly connected to the scaling up of investment in research and innovation’.
Project website: https://www.kios.ucy.ac.cy/teaming/
“The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 664638/ 664639”.
