By Shauna Katz, public/private partnership officer - GO/DARRI
Introduction to these new funding calls
Within the context of France 2030, the INSERM, INRAe and INRIA have been tasked with launching a new funding scheme aimed at accelerating the transformation of key sectors, notably healthcare and biomedical research, digitalization and environmental transitions, respectively. The overall goal of this funding is to accelerate disruptive research, with the objective of “strengthening our collective capacity to carry out high-risk, high-impact research and innovation initiatives, with scientific excellence, rapid deployment and flexible systems as key principles”. High-risk research covers all fundamental or applied research that could generate strategic conceptual or technological breakthroughs for France in the decades to come. The INSERM, INRAe and INRIA have all structured these funding calls to be agile and efficient to support the development of a new shared culture of high-risk research without being subject to a predefined need or an incremental approach, which sometimes leads to less innovative, less risky solutions.
Modalities of the calls
In order to maintain flexibility and reactivity of the funding, there are no fixed deadlines for submission: projects are evaluated on a rolling basis with evaluation committees reuniting every few months. Additionally, the funding scheme is relatively flexible with single-coordination and consortia projects being eligible (note that consortia can include non-French partners and industrial partners, however, they are not able to directly receive funding).
Specificities of each funding call
This funding call aims to enable the detection, as far upstream as possible, of research avenues that could lead to disruptive, high-impact scientific innovations in medical research. The Impact Santé program encompasses 2 funding schemes: 1) Exploratory: detection and priming of exploratory projects (up to a maximum of 100k€ per project); 2) Acceleration: support and acceleration of more mature projects (up to 3M€ per project). Project duration is between 24-48 months.
The aim of this funding is to support research that combines risk, breakthrough and impact, to support talent and ideas, and to create the conditions for generating conceptual or technological breakthroughs, thereby helping to meet major societal challenges and associated transitions in the field of agriculture, food and the environment. The EXPLOR’AE program encompasses 3 types of projects: 1) Acculturation: to raise the scientific community's awareness of the principles of rupture in research, and to promote dialogue and reflection by proposing methods to stimulate and support scientists' creativity thus creating a pool of high-risk, disruptive research projects; 2) Exploration: 150k€ for up to 18 months to explore “new” ideas at the frontier of knowledge that have little chance of being financed by other funding programs; 3) Transformation: 1-2M€ for projects of 3-4 years to support large-scale collaborative, interdisciplinary research projects of international standing, on strategic, disruptive and high-risk topics, with proven potential for innovation and impact.
The PIQ program aims to support scientific risk-taking and address the current and future challenges of research and innovation in and through digital technology, by funding scientists wishing to undertake high-risk, high-impact research projects. The PIQ program offers agile project engineering adapted to this uncertainty. The approach adopted is not to freeze the project in the description given at the time of submission, but to allow it to evolve during the program. It also enables program commitments (funding, duration) to be adapted to the progress of the project.
If you have any questions or would like to learn more about these funding opportunities, please contact shauna.katz[at]pasteur.fr.
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