LUKE is an initiative of several EU Member States and countries associated to Horizon Europe aiming to establish a multilateral funding and capacity building platform focusing on Ukraine. Its key objectives are to implement a joint call and fund transnational research and innovation (R&I) projects with Ukrainian participation as well as to enhance Ukraine's R&I capacities. A modern, efficient, and transparent science and innovation system is crucial for Ukraine’s post-war recovery and economic prosperity. Sharing best practices, pooling resources, and transferring knowledge can significantly contribute to unlocking Ukraine's scientific potential, improving the framework conditions for research and innovation, and integrating the country more closely into the European Research Area (ERA). The LUKE network comprises a group of funding parties and the project consortium responsible for accompanying activities. The overall coordination and management are conducted by a call secretariat. Altogether 19 organisations from 13 countries have already confirmed their willingness to participate as funders within the network: Austria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine itself, as well as the EU accession candidates Georgia, Republic of Moldova, and Türkiye. Additional funding agencies have expressed interest in joining and may be included in the group of funding parties once the joint call has been finalized. The project consortium includes nine organisations, amongst them the German Aerospace Center (DLR) as coordinator, the National Research Foundation of Ukraine (including the Horizon Office and Science Council), Centre for Social Innovation (Austria), Danish Board of Technology (DBT), and University of Daugavpils (Latvia).

MERLIN aims to support ICT researchers, SMEs and startups across to realise the full potential and impact of their research and development outputs by crafting them into innovations and achieving market validation using modern needs-first, market-led methodologies like Business Model Canvas, Customer Discovery, Lean Hardware, etc. The project will provide training, networking and follow-on support through 43 practical workshops, 4 webinars (on SME growth and PPP business models), 5 international conference workshops and 8 meetups with potential customers and commercial partners. MERLIN will have over 1250 attendees at in-person workshops and meetups across the four principal nodes of Madrid (ES), Vilnius (LT), Poznań (PL) and Cambridge (UK) and the secondary nodes of Berlin (DE), Warsaw (PL), Tallinn (EE), Bucharest (RO), international webinars and international ICT conferences in Europe. For sustainability, and to increase the participants’ success in bringing to market their innovation, MERLIN will integrate participants with existing national (e.g. Innovate UK, Enterprise Ireland, CDTI) and European initiatives (Startup Europe, ERDF, EFSI, etc.) designed to support early entrepreneurship, product development, market access, seed financing and microfinancing for continued support on their journey to market validation and company growth. The project will also identify and promote high-potential innovators through attendance at Startup Europe events to access other European startup ecosystems, entrepreneurs, investors and accelerators. These activities will see over 160 new business model canvases developed, 1040 individual 1-on-1s with potential commercial customers, serial entrepreneurs and business angels, 250 applications to regional, national and international support actions and the creation of 30 new ventures in the lifetime of the project with an anticipated further 60-100 in the following 3 years’ post project, creating over 1200 jobs in the medium-term.

For the EU economy to grow sustainably it needs to re-industrialise, leveraging innovation and digital intelligence. Blockchain Innovation Spaces (Block.IS) envisions to build an open and collaborative cross-border, cross-sectoral innovation ecosystem that fosters the use of this cutting-edge technology in three vital sectors for the European economy: agrifood, logistics and finance. Block.IS will bring together (connect) actors (with an emphasis on SMEs and clusters) from these three heavily interconnected sectors, with SMEs/ innovators, to catalyse their cooperation towards innovation-driven and mutual growth (boost). The catalysation is aimed at networking the members of the ecosystem, raising understanding of the benefits of blockchain technology and stimulating the creation of new blockchain-based solutions - Cluster Missions and Clusters-Innovators Assembly. Block.IS will support innovators (SMEs) all the way from ideation to commercialisation offering them tailored business and technical support as well as direct funding, through a novel funnel approach - Innovate > Experiment > Commercialise acceleration programme. As such, the project will directly foster and strengthen competitiveness of digital SMEs (that will develop the solutions) and of the clusters and SMEs of the three verticals which will use them to offer added value to their customers. The Block.IS consortium is a fusion between: Tech founders and SMEs community (F6S), sector-oriented clusters and sectoral associations (VOICT, FEDACOVA, IT-Log, DSME, FTS), international innovation and Tech-transfer specialists (INO, IDI, CIVITTA, SYN) and Blockchain tech experts (INTRA, TNO); with an outreach of >1,017,000 SME. Block.IS invests 81% of the EC budget in SMEs and 51% through Open Calls (€2,800,000)

The overall aim of RODIN is to coordinate activities within the different PAA Innovation Actions and support them by increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of their activities, and improve their cross-PAA collaboration. Main objectives of the project are to: • Disseminate best practice in the operation of robotics DIH networks • Gather information from DIH networks on their composition, service offers, assets and infrastructure relevant to applying robotics in the PAA • Develop collaboration with and between the DIH networks, developing links to key stakeholders in robotics and technology • Deliver communication and outreach activities to external stakeholders and policy makers • Establish a resource to share information with DIH IAs • Assess the performance of DIH networks and provide feedback to the consortia to improve and enhance their operation • Coordinate access to, and development of, platforms, pilots and demonstrators • Enable industry-led standards development • Assess the access to finance for SMEs and the role DIH networks play in developing synergy between national, regional and European funding mechanisms • Develop means of extending the networks across Europe • Develop strategy around the future development of DIHs in robotics All objectives will be achieved by the proposed activities detailed in the work packages. RODIN also establishes and manages the Working Group that: • sets the basis for cooperation with the IAs • feeds back assessments of their performance and operation to the IAs • delivers best practice information to the IAs • develops models of sustainability for robotic DIH networks RODIN fully addresses the CSA called for under DT-ICT-02-2018 b): Robotics – Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH). It addresses the need to support and cooperate with the four Digital Innovation Hub networks under DT-ICT-01-2018 a) to coordinate activities and develop synergy between the four Priority Area DIH networks thereby creating a network of networks.

The main objective of TRINITY is to create a network of multidisciplinary and synergistic local digital innovation hubs (DIHs) composed of research centers, companies, and university groups that cover a wide range of topics that can contribute to agile production: advanced robotics as the driving force and digital tools, data privacy and cyber security technologies to support the introduction of advanced robotic systems in the production processes. The result will be a one-stop shop for methods and tools to achieve highly intelligent, agile and reconfigurable production, which will ensure Europe’s welfare in the future. The network will start its operation by developing demonstrators in the areas of robotics we identified as the most promising to advance agile production, e.g. collaborative robotics including sensory systems to ensure safety, effective user interfaces based on augmented reality and speech, reconfigurable robot workcells and peripheral equipment (fixtures, jigs, grippers, …), programming by demonstration, IoT, secure wireless networks, etc. These demonstrators will serve as reference implementation for two rounds of open calls for application experiments, where companies with agile production needs and sound business plans will be supported by TRINITY DIHs to advance their manufacturing processes. Besides technology-centered services, primarily laboratories with advanced robot technologies and know-how to develop innovative application experiments, TRINITY network of DIHS will also offer training and consulting services, including support for business planning and access to financing. Services of participating DIHs and dissemination of information to wider public will be provided through a digital access point that will be developed in the project. Another important activity of the project will be the preparation of a business plan to sustain the network after the end of the project funding.