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307 new research projects in the life sciences win FP5 funding

The European Commission has recently announced the selection of 307 new projects which are set to receive 494 million euros in funding from the Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources component of the Fifth RTD Framework Programme. Some 2749 participants will be inv...

The European Commission has recently announced the selection of 307 new projects which are set to receive 494 million euros in funding from the Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources component of the Fifth RTD Framework Programme. Some 2749 participants will be involved in these projects - including 379 from industry. The projects will address a range of issues including food, nutrition and health, the control of infectious diseases, the development of new therapies and environmentally friendly industrial products and processes, the impact of environment on health, sustainable agriculture, and the ageing population. The Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources programme has an overall budget of 2413 million euros to be distributed over the programme's four-year lifetime (up to 2002). The Research Directorate-General published the first call for proposals for this programme on 6 March 1999 with successive deadlines covering different areas. This is standard procedure for the thematic programmes of FP5 practised in order to reduce over-subscription and to make best use of the budget available each year. Almost 14000 participants were involved in submitting 1792 proposals to the Commission, all seeking funding under various action lines of the programme. Participation was particularly high in the Key Actions on the 'Cell factory', 'Environment and health' and the 'Ageing population', as well as throughout the generic activities which cover research activities of a more fundamental nature. The Commission attributes the higher level of response in these areas to the changing focus of European research funding efforts under FP5: 'These are domains where European efforts have never before been so deliberately focused, for instance on exploring the impact of the environment on health, or tackling the problems of an ageing population. The high response rate for the research activities of a generic nature testifies to the need to maintain a strong research base', says a Commission spokesman. Upon receipt, the Commission checks proposals' eligibility for funding. Almost 100 proposals received by the Quality of Life and management of living resources team failed this preliminary hurdle for formal reasons including late arrival, incomplete files or lack of original signatures. Those passing this check were sent on to independent expert evaluators across Europe. Working in panels throughout June and July 1999, 992 independent experts, under the Research Directorate-General's supervision, evaluated all eligible proposals. The evaluation is in two stages. Firstly, the evaluators assess and rank proposals within each topic according to their scientific and technical excellence, as well as proposed project management. Those projects reaching the predetermined thresholds go forward to a second stage involving a different set of independent experts who evaluate the 'relevance' of the proposal, in terms of its likely contribution to both the programme's and the EU's social and economic objectives. 'Many proposals that were ranked as excellent in the first part of this evaluation phase, failed on the latter', notes the Commission. The selection criteria as well as the guidelines for expert evaluators are published on the Internet at: http://cordis.europa.eu/life/home.html Independent observers monitored the whole process to verify conformity and fairness, and reported their findings to the Programme Committee, which is made up of Member State representatives. The evaluators also picked out some proposals for ethical review, which took place after the evaluation. Now that the 307 projects have been selected, the Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources team has had an opportunity to analyse the results of the programme's first call for proposals. Their data reveals that in the life sciences, the Fifth RTD Framework Programme has triggered more multidisciplinary projects than in previous Framework Programmes. In addition, the average project now has 8.9 partners and EU funding of 1.6 million euros, a significant increase compared with the average life-science project under the Fourth RTD Framework Programme. 'This reflects the orientation of the new EU research programmes, which target socio-economic objectives in addition to scientific questions and therefore require the research to be carried out with a more multidisciplinary approach, and involving a greater variety of partners such as academic scientists, researchers from industrial laboratories and users', says a Commission spokesman. One negative consequence, however, is that the funding of bigger projects will inevitably result in lower selection rates. The selection (or success) rate across the programme for the first call is just over 18%, although this rate varies widely between action lines. Below average were the 'Cell factory' Key Action which could only support 10.4% of proposals received, the 'Ageing population' Key Action where the success rate was 13.7% and 'Environment and health', 15.7% Industrial participation is also quite high, says the Commission, with 379 of 2749 participants from industry (13.8%). Industrial penetration, (the proportion of projects including at least one industrial partner) exceeds 50% with participation from industry particularly high in the 'Cell factory' Key Action where 38 out of 41 projects include at least one industrial partner in the consortium. Proposals from clusters were of particularly high quality, a Commission spokesman adds. Clustering is a novel approach in FP5, designed to tackle multifaceted problems whose complexities are best addressed by multiple, coordinated, concurrent approaches. Of the 26 proposals of substantial size submitted as clusters, nine won funding (including five in the area of Infectious diseases) with a total EU contribution of 36.6 million euros - over 4 million per project. Commenting on the outcome of the selection, Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin said: 'The selected projects once more underline the important role of research in relation to European policy making. The area of food safety, where the publication of a White Paper by the European Commission is imminent, is one of many possible examples of necessary complementarity between the EU's research programmes and its other policies. I am also pleased to see that European research programmes are very successful in helping traditional barriers to be overcome, for example between academia and industry and, more generally, between the private and the public sector. I am convinced that at the end of the day European citizens will benefit from the 'added value' created through our joint efforts'.