EU encourages Russian participation in FP6
A recently launched EU-funded project aims to foster collaboration between the EU and Russia within the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). The project, called 'RUSERA' (supporting the Russian participation in EU research and technological development (RTD) programmes) targets a major gap, namely the lack of research cooperation between the more promising and advanced Russian regions and the EU's research organisations. At present, research cooperation between Russia and the EU is concentrated around the main economic centres of Moscow and St. Petersburg. In order to foster collaboration and increase the numbers of collaborative success stories involving the EU and the rest of Russia within FP6, the RUSERA project will establish a network of Regional Information Nodes (RIN) in 37 of the most advanced Russian regions. The EU is providing close to 120,000 euro to the project, which is funded under the INCO (international cooperation) section of the 'Integrating and strengthening European research' programme of FP6. The RUSERA project will organise and hold information days on FP6 in the 37 regions and create a web-based database on all Russian research organisations that might be relevant to the INCO programme. Training courses to improve the RINs' necessary skills will be organised with experts from the EU. Furthermore, RUSERA will establish at least 37 potential EU-Russian consortia. It is hoped that this, in turn, will lead to the submission of not less than 13 successful proposals in FP6 projects. The network of Regional Information Nodes will be based on the existing network of the regional offices of the Russian Association for Engineering Education (AEER). This association has offices in all the Russian regions and is supported by the local authorities in each region. This will ensure the continuation of the RIN network after the project ends in April 2005. All the RIN offices will cooperate and liaise with the Russian and the EU-National Contact Point (NCP) offices.
Countries
Russia