First Project Periodic Report

Publishable summary

Ukraine is one of the Europe’s neighbours, and the reinforcement of the cooperation with Ukraine in the context of the European Research Area (ERA) is an important part of the European Union’ international collaboration activities.

The 36-month SUCCESS project gives Ukraine the possibility to improve the research activities of their highest quality in the FP7 thematic priority “Nanosciences, nanotechnologies, materials & new production technologies” (NMP), and in particular in the field of Material Sciences, through twinning activities between one of the leading Ukrainian scientific and educational organisations, the Institute for Scintillation Materials of Academy of Science of Ukraine (ISMA), with their long term partner University Claude Bernard of Lyon (UCBL). The S&T specialist (inno), an international S&T collaboration expert and experienced coach and FP7 trainer for the scientific organisations, has provided methodological, coaching and training support to the project, and the Kharkov Technologies has supported the awareness raising and international cooperation campaign of ISMA.

During the first project period, a coherent development strategy for ISMA has been prepared, based on the SWOT and on the socio-economic analysis. A joint research plan has been agreed by the twinned partners. A plan for strengthening of collaboration research links between ISMA and other EU research organisations has been designed and started to be implemented. It is expected that it will improve the networking capacities of ISMA with research centres in Member States or Associated Countries in view of disseminating scientific information & results of research, and will help to identify new partners with similar scientific interests. These activities will also allow ISMA to increase its regional coverage and topics and to improve its responses to the socio-economic needs of the region.

Project registered at mid-time a significant progress on the main types of activities, thus forming a coherent plan for improving the ISMA’ capacities in a number of fields relevant to the FP7 Thematic Priority “NMP”:

• Preparatory and analytical activities, to allow better understanding of ISMA forces and weaknesses, socio-economic demand and preparing of ISMA Strategic Development Plan.
• Twinning activities, based on the twinning and joint research plan prepared and implemented jointly by ISMA and UCBL. This activity includes exchange of researchers and young specialists, organisation of joint scientific workshops, set up of joint research experiments, feasibility study and amerced negotiation on setting up a joint virtual laboratory ISMA-UCBL.
• International cooperation activities, such as networking & brokerage, ETP and FP7 consortia integration implementing on wide European and regional level, involving other European organisations to extending the project impact. UCBL is pleased to open its scientific networks in Europe for ISMA.
• Training and coaching activities to increase ISMA understanding of FP7, build competences and enhance the Institute’s participation in FP7.

Two peer reviews were organised in order to validate two projects key deliverables by the high level S&T and policy specialists.

For the second part of the project live-time, the focus of the consortium will be put on the activities linked to the reinforcement of the international cooperation capacities of ISMA. It will complement the Research and Innovation activities described in the National Indicative Programmes and covered by the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instruments (ENPI).

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