Commission selects first EIC Transition projects to take breakthrough technologies from the lab into the real world

This new scheme is designed to turn research results generated by EIC Pathfinder pilot projects and European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept projects into commercially viable ventures, by validating the technologies in real world settings and building the business case to bring the innovations to market. It was designed in a partnership between the EIC and the ERC with advice from members of the ERC Scientific Council and the EIC pilot Advisory Board.

The scheme supports both single entities (research teams, SMEs, spin outs) as well as small consortia (up to 5 partners from different countries). The successful participants come from 24 EU Member States and Horizon Europe associated countries, with the highest number of participants  coming from Germany (25), Italy (17) and Spain (14).

This first Transition call included dedicated funding for technologies in energy harvesting and storage and medical technologies and devices as well as open funding for any area of technology. Among the 42 selected projects:

• 29 under the open funding
• 4 under Energy harvesting and storage technologies challenge
• 9 under the EIC Transition Medical Technologies and Devices challenge

Some examples of selected projects include:

• FADEQ - working on a fully automated cell-free DNA extraction and quantification of liquid biopsies (blood tests with growing potential in diagnostics for cancer and prenatal screening) safely, from patient to the lab.
• THERMOBAT - develops an innovative Latent Heat Thermophotovoltaic (LHTPV) battery for long duration storage (10 to 100 hours) and combined heat and power (CHP) generation.
• NanoVision - an affordable, compact, multi-modal and high-throughput photonic-chip based optical nanoscopy (super-resolution optical microscopy).
• VRP - aiming to commercialise the novel technology called Visual Robot Programming (VRP): a no-code gesture-control robot programming solution. Using this intuitive technology, any user is empowered to teach industrial robots without prior knowledge in robotics and with minimal training.

Background information

EIC Transition funds innovation activities that go beyond the experimental proof of principle in laboratory to supports both:

• Maturation and validation of a novel technology from the lab to the relevant real world application environment;
• Development of a business case and (business) model towards the innovation’s future commercialisation.

Each project will receive a grant of up to €2.5million (more in exceptional cases) and will have access to EIC Business Acceleration Services including coaching, mentoring, and partnering events. Projects are also eligible for the Fast Track scheme to access the EIC Accelerator for supporting the commercialisation and scale up phases.