The European Innovation Council (EIC) has selected 27 projects following the September 2023 EIC Transition cut-off. Each of these successful proposals, selected among 257 eligible submissions, will receive a grant of up to €2.5 million. The selected participants come from 16 EU Member States and Horizon Europe associated countries.
EIC Transition funding provides follow up funding to results achieved by EIC Pathfinder, FET (Future and Emerging Technologies), and European Research Council Proof of Concept projects. While the Open funding scheme awarded projects with no predefined thematic priorities, Transition Challenges gave support to projects within predefined thematic areas with the aim of achieving specific objectives for each Challenge.
The 27 selected projects consist of:
- 12 under the Open funding;
- 10 under the “Micro-Nano Bio devices” Challenge;
- 1 under the “Environmental intelligence” Challenge;
- 4 under the “Chip-scale optical frequency combs” Challenge.
Selected projects include:
QlibriNANO (Germany) — the world’s most sensitive absorption microscope, enabling the detection, imaging, characterization, understanding and development of nanoscale matter on a new level by its unique combination of fast and ultrasensitive hyperspectral imaging. QlibriNANO gives access to a so-far inaccessible area of information relevant for research fields like nanoparticles, optical coatings, thin films, among others, making the invisible visible for the first time. The innovation rests on the usage of an optical microresonator instead of a conventional objective. Qlibri’s unique blend of expertise, combining a profound know-how in microresonators and deep understanding of microscopy, particularly raster scanning techniques, has made it possible to make a technology transfer from Quantum optics to optical microscopy to develop QlibriNANO.
COCOPOP (Ireland) — the first coherent-capable external laser source (ELS) which benefits today’s systems, and also future-proofs them by enabling full exploitation of the third scaling dimension-bit rate/wavelength-through coherent communication. In doing so, Pilot Photonics will capture for Europe a key position in this strategically important market segment, forecasted to grow to $2.2bn by 2032. Building upon developments in EIC “PICOMB”, the chip-scale frequency comb that will be matured and commercialised through COCOPOP brings many benefits over commercial state of the art DFB arrays, such as unmatched linewidth, relative intensity noise, output power, and wavelength stability derived from the synchronisation and locking of independent lasers with a low linewidth, frequency-locked optical frequency comb (OFC).
TREM2MEDS (Italy) — the transplantation of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) engineered by lentiviral vectors (LVs) to express robust levels of the Triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) in their central nervous system (CNS) myeloid/microglial progeny. The restoration of TREM2 function in microglia, by intervening on key mechanisms contributing to neurodegeneration, has the potential to overcome the limited efficacy of current treatments for Alzheimer's Disease (AD), which only exert symptomatic but not curative effects. The project emerges from the ERC PoC 2022 project TREM2μENGINES, which validated the efficacy of a novel treatment for AD and Nasu-Hakola Disease (NHD) in murine models.
Background information
EIC Transition projects focus on results generated by EIC Pathfinder, FET (Future and Emerging Technologies – as the predecessor of EIC Pathfinder) or European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept projects, to mature the technologies and build a business case for specific applications. Grants of up to €2.5 million are available to validate and demonstrate technology in application-relevant environment and develop market readiness.
The selected projects 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.
Under the 2024 work programme the next cut-off date for EIC Transition applications is 18 September.
More information
Details
- Publication date
- 5 March 2024
- Author
- European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency