Accelerator Innovation Pilot Project Preparation

Content and timeline

The European Commission has launched the Horizon 2020 call INFRAINNOV-04-2020 for Innovation Pilot projects, directed at Research Infrastructure networks to kick-start the implementation of common strategies and roadmaps for technological developments required for improving their services through partnership with industry. Thanks to the high level of integration reached by our community and to the quality of our previous initiatives, the Commission has selected “Innovation in accelerator technologies” as one of the priority domains for this call.

On behalf of the European particle accelerator community, we are going to submit by the call deadline of 17 March 2020 a proposal for a collaborative project with an overall EC contribution of 10 Million €, for a duration of 4 years starting in May 2021. The submission is coordinated by the TIARA Collaboration Council (Test Infrastructure and Accelerator Research Area) and supported by the ongoing ARIES Integrating Activity Project. 

With the goal of preparing a coherent and ambitious proposal to develop technologies that meet the increasingly challenging demands of accelerator users, TIARA and ARIES have launched a call for proposals for collaborative actions to be included in the final Workplan of the Innovation Pilot project with deadline end of August 2019.

Outcome of the call for proposals

The submission has been extremely successful, with 101 proposals received by the deadline, and a Committee composed of 15 representatives of the TIARA members and of 4 industry representatives has been set up to evaluate the proposals accordingly to a set of criteria.  

The selection has been extremely difficult because of the very high quality of the proposals. Every proposal was evaluated by three committee members, while the note on “coherence with the priorities of the accelerator community” was collectively attributed at a final plenary meeting.

The final ranking of the projects with the result of the evaluation (accepted – accepted with modifications – not accepted) is available here

Unfortunately the budget constraints allow supporting only about one third of the proposals. While some proposals have been accepted as submitted, for others the Committee is asking for modifications that can consist in changes to workplan, budget or partner structure, or in the requirement to combine with other proposals. Please note that some proposals have been moved to a more appropriate category (Strategy, Prototype or Development) than the one of the original submission. Some proposals are been kept as reserve in case additional budget would be available. The final decision on the reserve proposals will be taken before the end of the year.

Proposals that were not accepted at this call will have another opportunity to participate since the committee has decided to reserve a fraction of the budget for a second internal call for Developments that will take place immediately after the start of the new Project.

While the overall notes are confidential, every proposer is free to contact accelerator.innovation@cern.ch if he/she wishes to have access to the average notes for his/her proposal.