Horizon impact award

Deadline: Mar 8, 2022  
CALL EXPIRED

Specific Challenge:

Expected Outcomes:

• To celebrate the successful uptake and use of EU funded project results, thus boosting and promoting their achieved impact.
• To showcase best practices, create role models and inspire R&I beneficiaries to use their research results to create value for the society at large.

The Commission will award on an annual basis a recognition prize to reward beneficiaries that have successfully used their research results to create value for society. The beneficiaries must be able to show proof of effective exploitation and uptake of their research results. This action aims to illustrate the wider socio-economic benefits of the EU investment in R&I and to encourage project beneficiaries to best manage and use their research results.

In particular, six winners will be selected by the evaluation jury for their achievements. The prizes are monetary and each of the six winners will receive EUR 25.000.

Total of six prizes of EUR 0.025 each: EUR 0.15 million from the 2021 budget, and EUR 0.15 million from the 2022 budget.

All applicants are required to submit letter(s) of support coming from the user community that can provide testimony on achieved impact.

Essential award criteria:

The prize will be awarded, after closure of the contest, to the contestant(s) who in the opinion of the jury best addresses the following cumulative criteria:

1. Pathway from results to societal benefits:

Applicants will need to detail how the R&I results were directly or indirectly exploited after the lifetime of the project. They will need to describe the activities that were done to ensure that the R&I results lead to societal benefits. They will need to describe the scale and the sustainability of their actions.

2. Achieved impact:

Applicants will need to demonstrate the already existing impact and created societal benefits. They will need to detail concrete examples of how their research results have benefitted the society and who are the user communities that have profited from it. The achieved impact must be already materialized. The letter of support will serve as a testimony of the described impact.

Eligibility criteria:

The contest is open to all legal entities (i.e. natural or legal persons, including international organisations) or groups of legal entities that participated as beneficiaries in FP7 or Horizon 2020[1]. The projects must have ended by close of the contest[2]. Natural persons such as ERC principal investigators or MSCA fellows and legal entities principally created by past beneficiaries for the exploitation of the project results, are also eligible.

Applicants that have already received an EU or Euratom prize cannot receive a second prize for the same activities

For the common Rules of Contest for Prizes please see the Funding and Tenders Portal.

The specific Rules of Contest will be published in 2021 and in 2022 by the European Commission, which will directly launch and manage the contest and award the prizes based on the judgement of independent experts.

Scope:

Objectives

The Commission will award on an annual basis a recognition prize to reward beneficiaries that have successfully used their research results to create value for society. The beneficiaries must be able to show proof of effective exploitation and uptake of their research results.This action aims to illustrate the wider socio-economic benefits of the EU investment in R&I and to encourage project beneficiaries to best manage and use their research results.

The award enables individuals or teams to showcase their best practices and achievements. This will encourage other beneficiaries to use and manage their results in the best way possible.It aims to create role models and inspire beneficiaries of research and innovation funding to maximise the impact of their research.

Expected results

With this award, the Commission aims to champion the uptake and use of EU funded project results, thus further boosting economic, societal, and/or policy impacts. It is expected that the award, through showcasing best practices, will create role models and inspire R&I beneficiaries to use their research results to create value for the society at large.

Indicative timetable and deadlines

• Call opening: 6 January 2022
• Deadline for submission: 8 March - 17:00 CET (Brussels)
• Evaluation: Q2 2022
• Information on evaluation results/award: Q2-Q3-Q4 2022 (TBC)