European coordinated research on long-term ICT and ICT-based scientific challenges

Project Information

CHIST-ERA III

Grant agreement ID: 768977

DOI

10.3030/768977

Project closed

EC signature date 8 September 2017

Start date 1 December 2017

End date 30 November 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Future and Emerging Technologies (FET)

Total cost

€ 14 438 750,00

EU contribution

€ 4 500 787,50

Coordinated by

AGENCE NATIONALE DE LA RECHERCHE
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CHIST-ERA III (European coordinated research on long-term ICT and ICT-based scientific challenges)

Reporting period: 2018-12-01 to 2023-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

CHIST‐ERA is a programme for funding research on emerging topics in Information and Communication Sciences and Technologies (ICST), which gathers national and regional research funding organisations in Europe and beyond, with the support of the EC through the ERA‐NET scheme. CHIST-ERA III covers the period from 01/12/2017 to 30/11/2023. CHIST-ERA was initially supported by the EC's FET program, then by the European Innovation Council's Pathfinder program. Its focus is long‐term, transformational, multidisciplinary research.
Its main objective is to reinforce the transnational collaboration between Member States in the area of ICST and to integrate the related national research communities in Europe through the funding of transnational research projects. Another goal is to encourage Open Science best practices.
In the framework of CHIST-ERA III, two joint transnational calls are planned (CHIST-ERA Calls 2017 and 2018), each covering two topics. The two topics of Call 2017 are "Object recognition and manipulation by robots: Data sharing and experiment reproducibility" and "Industrial big data and process modelling for smart factories". The two topics of the Call 2018 are "Analog computing for artificial intelligence" and "Smart distribution of computing in dynamic networks".
The consortium of CHIST-ERA gathers 32 national or regional funding organisations from 28 countries including 4 outside Europe: Quebec, Brasil and Taiwan. This represents a significant expansion from the initial consortium, which gathered 9 funding organisations from 9 countries in 2009. CHIST‐ERA is thus the main hub for European funding organisations in ICST and ICST-based research.
While the scientific scope of this ERA‐NET is wide, for each call are selected two focused topics of common interest. Therefore, CHIST‐ERA launches each year one call on different emerging topics. The topics are especially selected for their potential to lead to significant breakthroughs, and where there is need to work at a European scale to reach a critical mass.
This goal is served by three operational objectives, namely:
1. Setting the basis for effective and durable coordination and cooperation of the CHIST‐ERA funding organisations;
2. Identifying and sharing areas of common interest and new ambitious research topics with a potential high impact on future EU industrial research and competitiveness;
3. Launching common calls for research proposals and implement follow‐up processes.
CHIST‐ERA aims at overcoming the fragmentation of long‐term ICST research along national lines and thus creating synergies to amplify the activities of the national and regional funding organisations. It contributes to the development of a coordinated scientific policy throughout the European Research Area, and fulfils the needs and reinforces the strengths of the European ICST research community, so that it can be at the leading edge of world competition.

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

During the reporting period, from 01/12/2017 to 30/11/2023, 4 calls have been managed at different stages, thus covering 8 topics: Call 2016, Call 2017, Call 2018 and Call 2019.
CHIST‐ERA has thus successfully anchored the initiative in the portfolio of activities of its consortium members, acting as an operational platform for research funding organisations willing to co‐operate in the area of ICST to leverage the impact of the FET programme of the European Commission.
Each call is published within a relatively short timeframe of less than twelve months after the topics selection to maintain a high level of relevance of the calls in very competitive evolving ICST areas which need reactivity.
The success of the calls in terms of number of proposals submitted since the first call (393 - approx. 50 per call) and the total volume of funding requested (366 M€ - approx. 0.9-1 M€ per proposal) indicates the high expectations of the scientific community for such a novel approach targeting high‐risk, high‐impact focused research topics.
In addition to implementing joint calls, it is part of CHIST‐ERA’s mission to follow the progress of the funded projects. For this purpose, the funded projects produce a yearly activity report and need to attend the yearly CHISTERA projects seminar where they present their results. These are assessed by experts in order to provide a comprehensive vision of the scientific results. These experts thus contribute to produce an overall assessment and a portfolio analysis of CHIST‐ERA.
During the lifetime of CHIST-ERA III, 4 Projects Seminars were organized. During the Project Seminar 2019, a new topic of interest to the CHIST-ERA research communities emerged: open science. The ERA-NET served as a springboard for developing a concrete open science policy within the framework of CHIST-ERA IV.
As part of the project, the funding organisations in CHIST‐ERA worked since the beginning of the CHIST‐ERA I ERA‐NET to ensure the sustainability of the network. CHIST‐ERA is open to new funding organisations, and in parallel is interacting at different levels with sister initiatives and in particular the FLAG‐ERA and QuantERA ERA‐NETs.
As a consequence of the attractiveness of past calls and of a proactive approach to convince new funding organisations in Europe to join the consortium, the number of partners in CHIST‐ERA has been constantly growing with currently 32 partners on board, to be compared to 9 at the beginning of CHIST‐ERA I. This has also motivated new countries in Europe and beyond to join the ERA-NET CHIST-ERA IV, the follow-up to CHIST-ERA III.

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)

This ERA‐NET coordinates the long‐term research vision at national and European level in the area of ICST in order to leverage the research efforts on some strategic topics that will determine the future competitiveness as well as the scientific leadership of Europe. It contributes to making Europe a world leader in the area of long‐term multidisciplinary transformative research in ICST. It also reduces the fragmentation of long‐term ICST research along national lines and thus creates synergy to amplify the action of the national agencies, to contribute decisively to the development of a concerted scientific policy throughout the ERA.
The following impacts related to the research projects are expected:
- Selection and launch of a significant number of research projects contributing to the joint vision developed by the programme owners;
- Strengthen the coordination of different projects and related scientific communities by organizing systematic project assessment conferences;
- High impact of research results produced by the projects, leading to EU competitiveness: Increased positioning of EU research and researchers on those selected topics, allowing developing future international collaborations where European groups would take the lead; experience in collaboration between national programme owners that will pave the way to other joint programming activities where and when appropriate; coordinate, interface, and open up mutually the national programmes of its partners in order to enhance collaboration among the national communities and unify the European Research Area in ICST.
As a constant action, CHIST‐ERA wants to collaborate with national and regional funding organisations beyond those initially present in the consortium, so as to spread the benefits of increased collaboration throughout the European Research Area.
The above-mentioned impacts are being pursued as part of CHIST-ERA IV.

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