Unique collaborative ecosystem and programme for promoting the transatlantic cooperation in NGI technologies

Project Information

NGI Sargasso

Grant agreement ID: 101092887

DOI

10.3030/101092887

Project closed

EC signature date 16 November 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 December 2025

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 6 000 000,00

EU contribution

€ 6 000 000,00

Coordinated by

FONDATION EUROPEENNE DE LA SCIENCE
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - NGI Sargasso (Unique collaborative ecosystem and programme for promoting the transatlantic cooperation in NGI technologies)

Reporting period: 2024-07-01 to 2025-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

NGI Sargasso’s mission is to catalyse transatlantic collaboration, via distribution of cascade funding, with calls focusing on the development and experimentation of new ideas, implementation of prototypes, and contribution to standards and open-source communities on technology trends with the potential to reshape tomorrow’s NGI technologies and services. The particularity of the NGI Sargasso is that it mandates collaboration between EU teams and US and/or Canadian teams in its projects.
Led by the European Science Foundation (an EU association with a network of over 40,000 experts across all scientific disciplines and over 83 countries), supported by MWCB (an ecosystem builder driving the digital advancement of society), SPLORO (whose team has been part of different NGI projects, including the EU-US fellowship programme NGI Explorers), and AUSTRALO (leader of the community building in NGI Explorers and Think NEXUS).
As a cascade funding project, the main work of NGI Sargasso is the distribution of the cascade funding to its projects (grantees), with robust submission and evaluations procedures. The NGI Sargasso project also offers support to its projects and works closely with industry “mentors” that are offering their services to the grantees.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

NGI Sargasso main achievement was the Opening of 5 Open Calls, and the selection, training and funding of 53 projects.
At programme level, NGI Sargasso expanded its visibility, strengthened EU–US–Canada cooperation and created an active, distributed community of innovators and institutions, which can notably be shown with the successful completion of KPI and Milestones defined. Almost the entirety of the FSTP budget has been distributed, and 53 experiments were funded across five Open Calls, with strong representation in security, interoperability, decentralisation and digital governance. The OnCampus programme was very well received by the grantees, and most of them plan to continue their project in the long term, including building new ties with the American counterparts.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The broad geographical coverage of the applications reflects the strong pan-European interest in the NGI Sargasso programme and reinforces its relevance at the continental scale. Moreover, the
diversity of applicant profiles, ranging from SMEs and universities to NGOs and foundations, demonstrates the inclusive and multidisciplinary nature of the project, and highlights the project's
capacity to mobilize a wide and representative community across Europe and on the other side of the Atlantic.
The number of experiments funded significantly exceeds the minimum target; individual training and coaching activity where extremely well attended and the feedback from the grantees about the quality of the training is excellent; the Community build is strong and projects built strong ties
with their counterparts: they confirmed their will to continue the effort and the collaboration in the long-term. Finally, the Communication activities allowed to build a connected, visible, and resilient network of innovators poised to continue collaborating beyond the end of the programme.
All those Objectives and Outcomes reached show that NGI Sargasso delivered a highly visible, well-connected and policy-aware programme with long term impact.

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