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Contenuto archiviato il 2024-06-16

Micro and Nanotechnologies going to Eastern Europe through Networking

Final Report Summary - MINAEAST-NET (Micro and Nanotechnologies going to Eastern Europe through Networking)

MINAEAST-NET project's aim was to support the participation of organisations from acceding and candidate countries (ACCs) in Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) projects in the micro and nano technologies (MNT) domain, according to FP6 priority 2 (IST (related to micro and nanosystems)) and FP6 priority 3 (NMP (nanotechnologies)).

The partners involved in the project were research institutes and universities active in MNT field, from eight ACCs (Romania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Turkey), France, Germany and Greece.

MINAEAST-NET significantly helped in improving the visibility of ACCs in Member States (MSs) and facilitated the joining of research groups from ACCs on MNT in consortia for FP6 together with MS partners. The project was mainly focused on networking and dissemination activities. Various workshops, info-days and scientific events, meetings, exhibitions were organised/co-organised by the project. The events brought together participants from National Contact Points (NCPs), European Union (EU) officials, foreign researchers and representatives of industry as invited speakers, for a better information and understanding of EU programmes, exchanging of information and future cooperation in FP6/7 between ACC and MS scientific community and for establishing a better interaction between research, education and industry.

Dissemination activities included also articles for information and partner searches published in international publications and announcements through web pages and e-newsletters, allowing the exchange of information about research performed by organisations in eastern Europe.

During the project, an inventory of researchers and research organisations from ACCs and NMSs was performed with the aid of databases for collecting data about specialists and research centres in MNT domain. For the calls launched during the project lifetime, databases for partners matching were implemented. The registered entities provided information about their expertise and interest in accordance with topics from each call, in order to find suitable partners for new projects financed by FP6. The information from the databases hosted on the MINAEAST-NET project website (see http://www.minaeast.net online) was published in various formats in order to reach interested organisations from MSs, therefore increasing the chances for researchers to participate in European projects.

At local level of ACCs, MINAEAST-NET attracted industrial partners, by disseminating the scientific results of the research centres. The eastern project partners set-up and coordinated local networks, each being connected with national 'high quality centres of research' interacting between them. At European scale, the project cooperated and exchanged information with other international networks, projects in the MNT field.

The project addressed the following objectives:
-MINAEAST-NET acted as a key source of information about resources and results in MNT from ACCs and about the strong points of the ACC organisations, in order to increase the visibility and better cooperate with MS institutes and companies;
-for all MNT interested organisations from ACCs, MINAEAST-NET represented an important source of MNT specific project and partnership information: MNT related information about EC calls, international networking activities, partnership search from abroad;
-MINAEAST-NET supported the interaction between ACC and MS organisations to initiate FP6 proposals through organizing meetings, workshops and support travel cost for ACCs researchers to attend proposal preparation meetings/events in MS.

The objectives of the project were focused on the objectives of the call, targeting the following actions:
- activities intended 'to mobilise the human and material resources existing in a given field in associated candidate countries': Knowledge collection and processing: information about high quality research centres from ACCs participants in MINAEAST-NET, active in the field, was collected, processed and stored in databases with institutions & specialists (resources and results). These databases were linked with the webpage of MINAEAST-NET and might be accessed by research centres from MS in order to search partners for proposal in FP6;
- networking: a webpage, with links to all participants of MINAEAST-NET 'greatly facilitated communication between the centres having similar scientific interest';
- dissemination of 'scientific information as well as the results of research', by delivering to the researchers from ACCs and NMS the information about FP6, but also offering to the researchers from MS the information about resources and results from ACCs and NMS. Electronic media (webpage, e-mail, CD-ROMs), publications (Annual Reports, quarterly Information Bulletin) and events (workshops with invited scientists from EU countries covering certain thematic priority areas for FP6, seminars, meetings).
510470-minaeast-net.doc