During the third period, in regards to Human Resources, CMMI continued its extensive recruitment campaigns, hiring 26 new members of staff over the reporting period. Currently, CMMI employs 45 people from which the 41% are women.
Advances in the construction of the CMMI premises have been achieved event that we had a 3-year delays with the granting of the permits. The building permit application is expected to be issued by the Municipality of Larnaka in October. The Municipality of Larnaka in collaboration with the design firm and CMMI has started to prepare the tender specifications for the construction of the premises which are expected to be published in the first quarter of 2024.
A new development in regard to infrastructure is the agreement signed with the Community of Voroklini for the right-to-use unoccupied hangars of 2600 square meters plot which will host new premises that will be used by CMMI’s Research Centres for their scientific activities.
CMMI also focused on mobilizing the funds from the Letters of Commitment and received commitments corresponding to 11% of the value planned for the reporting period. CMMI now operated its new process to regularly liaise with contributors and plan, manage, coordinate, and follow up on the provision of complementary funding being able to perform an ‘audit’ of the commitments.
The CMMI’s Strategic Plan for the period 2021-2024 has been prepared and approved by the BoD of CMMI during the 6th BoD meeting. Each Unit and Centre has prepared its own sector plan for the period 2021-2024 that are aligned with the overall strategic plan of CMMI. The development of the Strategic Plan of CMMI led to the designation of twelve strategic elements, with the reassessment of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and consideration of additional KPIs.
Further advances have been made regarding the quality assurance and evaluation process of CMMI. The Quality Assurance Committee performed the first and second internal QA Reviews while the first External QA Evaluation was also completed. CMMI has developed a consolidated Action Plan consisting of the actions agreed arising from Internal and External QA Evaluation reports and EC Review reports recommendations. The consolidated Action Plan is designed to facilitate tracking, grouping and categorising of these recommendations with clear actions to be undertaken by the Units/ Centres with timeframe and responsibilities.
CMMI centres have been very active in publishing scientific papers in reputable journals. CMMI researchers published 11 scientific articles while one researcher was an editor in an open access book. Further, CMMI has continue its effort in proposals for funding by submitting 81 R&I proposals while 15 new projects has been approved for funding.
Big efforts have been given to diversify the sources of funding and attract additional research, innovation, commercial and direct assignment funding. The efforts resulted in €4,792,574.73 of funding secured and € 508,205.50 of funding standing at GA preparation stage.
CMMI has continued building its own network of partners and clients, the Blue Web and is expanding it with additional signatures of MoU as well as new collaborations. 17 new MoU’s were signed, reaching 50 in total, with the aim to engage in proposals, projects and joint dissemination, communication, and exploitation activities.
