BLACK SEA HORIZON has been designed to sustainably enhance bi-regional STI cooperation between the EU and the Black Sea region. The result of the project’s STI dialogue support will be an improved knowledge base about EU’s external environment and of the current framework for STI cooperation as well as an increased awareness to contribute to the elimination of remaining obstacles and to further intensify the bi-regional STI cooperation based on a jointly developed EU-Black Sea STI Cooperation Programme. To facilitate the pooling of resources the project will establish a group of committed funding parties, endowed with a functional call infrastructure and a clear set of rules and regulations, ready to implement a joint call for proposals. The participation of Black Sea researchers in HORIZON 2020 will be operationally facilitated through:

(i) identified common research topics taken-up in future calls for proposals,

(ii) provision of up-to-date relevant information and good practices to participate in HORIZON 2020 to a large group of researchers,

(iii) an increased number of joint research proposals through direct face-to-face meetings of,

(iv) a young generation of social scientists trained in HORIZON 2020 and ready to promote and back up future RTI cooperation and

(v) an increased readiness of programme owners both from the EU and Black Sea countries to engage jointly in JPIs and future COFUND ERA-NETs.

Furthermore, the project will increase understanding of cluster policies and cluster management, establish direct business contacts between cluster managers from the EU and target countries and raise awareness on the programming of as well as on the advantages of inclusive, sustainable and social innovation.

BLACK SEA HORIZON is supported by Horizon 2020 and will run for 36 months from February 2015 until January 2018.

The project brings together 19 partners from 16 countries, including:

Centre for Social Innovation (Austria)

German Aerospace Center, Project Management Agency (Germany)

Centre for Regional and International STI Studies and Support (Greece)

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Turkey)

Regional Centre for Information and Scientific Development Ltd. (Hungary)

Applied Research and Communications Fund (Bulgaria)

inno TSD (France)

International Centre for Black Sea Studies (Greece)

Center of International Projects (Moldova)

Institute of Fundamental Technological Research Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)

Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação, Consultadoria Empresarial e Fomento da Inovação, S.A. (Portugal)

Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (Romania)

National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia (Armenia)

Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Russia)

Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education National Research University “Higher School of Economics” (Russia)

Institute for Economics and Forecasting of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine (Ukraine)

Association European Studies for Innovative Development of Georgia (Georgia)

Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation (Georgia)

Science Development Foundation (Azerbaijan)

For additional information, visit the project website at: http://blacksea-horizon.eu/

Contacts:

Zoya Damianova, zoya.damianova@online.bg
Adriana Dimova, adriana.dimova@online.bg