The European Parliament invites proposals for expertise to the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy on regulatory and policy issues in the fields of industry, ICT, research and innovation and energy and climate change. Expertise shall be provided in the form of briefings and studies as well as attendance at committee meetings and presentations by lead experts or the organisation of workshops.

Tenders may be submitted for one or more of the following lots:

• industrial policy;
• digital agenda and ICT;
• research and innovation policy;
• energy and climate change policies.

All persons working on the contract must have at least five years of professional or academic experience, and project leaders must have at least 10 years of experience. Senior researchers must have at least seven years of experience. The tenderer must successfully have completed at least four scientific contracts in the past five years as well as having a relevant publishing record and knowledge of EU institutional framework and decision-making process.

Funding is worth €500,000 over 12 months, renewable up to three times.

For more information please go here. The closing date is the 20^th June 2013.

This year the Diamond Jubilee scholarships are named in honour of the IET’s patron, Her Majesty the Queen, and aim to help address the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills shortage in the UK.

Students likely to achieve three A’s at A level, three A grade Advanced Highers or five A grade Highers and starting an IET accredited engineering or technology degree this autumn, will be eligible to receive £1,000 per year.

The IET’s Ambition awards also offer opportunities for engineering students to get financial support: undergraduate and postgraduate students can apply for IET scholarships worth up to £10,000.

For more information please go here. The final deadline for entry for the postgraduate scholarships is 4^th April 2013 and the deadline for the Diamond Jubilee scholarships and undergraduate scholarships is 27^th June 2013.

This call is to support a research programme covering the key research challenges in the decommissioning, immobilisation and management of nuclear waste for disposal to replace the Diamond activity when it comes to a close this year.

A scoping workshop was held in Sheffield on the 1^st May 2013 to identify the critical issues that need to be addressed, namely:

• Spent Fuel Storage
• PuO2 and Fuel residues
• Legacy Pond and Silo Sludges
• Structural Integrity
• Alternative resources

The workshop was attended by representative of the UK university departments active in this area, and by representatives from the NDA, Sellafield, HSE/ONR and NNL. Only attendees that were present at the workshop may lead a submission to this call, though researchers that were not present may be involved as CoIs.

Researchers that did not attend the workshop that are interested in engaging with the call should contact the project leaders directly, details are given in the call documents.

For more information please go here. The closing date is 27^th June 2013.

NERC is inviting applications for the acquisition of capital items to enable the research community to exploit environmental data for science and end-user engagement. This £4·6m Environmental Big Data Capital Call is one of several NERC actions aimed at exploiting data in the environmental sciences under the NERC Environmental Information Initiative. Procurement of capital items must be completed by the end of March 2014.

Applications must be received by 16:00 GMT on 28th June 2013. Further details are available with the Outline Proposal template and Announcement of Opportunity outline document on the NERC Big Data Capital Call web page. Enquiries should be directed to innovation@nerc.ac.uk.
 

The research funding organisations of China (NSFC), France (ANR), Germany (DFG), The Netherlands (NWO) and the United Kingdom (ESRC) are delighted to launch a new multi-lateral collaboration consisting of a joint research programme on two basic societal challenges:

• The challenges of the Green Economy
• The challenges of Population Change

There will be a number of priority areas within these themes and researchers from these countries will be invited to submit proposals for joint projects in these areas. Researchers may have any disciplinary background within the social sciences and beyond, however, the proposal should be predominantly within the social sciences and applicants must satisfy the eligibility criteria of their home funding agency. Projects will also need to involve a number of Chinese and European partners; full guidance will be announced in the call.

Further information about the priority areas will be made available by the end of June 2013 with the full call launched in September. The closing date of the call will be in early December 2013. If you have any further questions, please go here.

EPSRC, as part of the Research Councils UK Energy Programme, wishes to support collaborative research projects between the UK and China, in partnership with the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) in the field of “Grid Scale Storage for Intermittency”. A scoping workshop was held in China in April to identify the following themes as priority areas for this call

• Advanced thermal and mechanical large scale energy storage from materials to devices
• Advanced electrochemical large scale storage from materials to devices
• Management, diagnosis and control of grid scale storage technologies
• Economics, policy and business models for grid scale storage
• Operation and control for balancing and stability of power systems with grid scale storage.

Proposals are invited from leading UK researchers wishing to develop contacts and joint projects with leading researchers eligible for NSFC support in China.

Up to £5M is available from EPSRC with matched equivalent resources from NSFC (up to 3M RMB per project). EPSRC expect to fund up to 5 projects through this call. The costs of the UK institutions will be met from EPSRC funds, and those for the Chinese partners will be met by NSFC.

For more information please go here. The closing date for applications is the 2^nd July 2013.

The aim of this work is to design and implement a new innovative programme to support research and development in climate technologies for developing countries.The programme will launch a variety of innovation prizes designed to stimulate and incentivise research to develop and deploy technologies for low income consumers that will improve poor people's access to clean energy, safe drinking water and resilience to climate change.The contract is scheduled to commence in January 2014 and will run for a period of up to 5 years until January 2019. A further extension of up to 2 years may be granted subject to resources and need.

Further information can be found here, the deadline for applications is 3rd July 2013.

The Department of Energy & Climate Change invites proposals for its tender for evaluation of the Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation programme. The tenderer will evaluate the Green Deal and the Energy Company Obligation, focusing on the delivery of the schemes against their objectives, and lessons for the future.
The successful contractor must be sufficiently flexible to respond to emerging information needs.
Funding will be in the range of £1.6 million to £2.9m over 20 months, with the possibility of a 12-month extension. The closing date is 3rd July 2013. Further information can be found here.
 

The Technology Strategy Board is set to invest £5 million to enable companies to test their Future Cities solutions on some of the UK’s most progressive cities.

Phase 1 of the competition will open on 1st July and will fund feasibility studies for companies in the field of Future Cities.
To gain a full insight into the challenges facing UK cities and how they are approaching them, 30 UK cities feasibility studies can be viewed online. The closing date for submissions will be 13th August with registration closing on 7th August 2013.
Phase 2 of the competition will open in early 2014.

Join the TSB on 3rd July to find out more about the competition and how you can engage with this exciting new phase of the Future Cities Programme. For more information please see here.
 

EUPHRESCO aims to increase cooperation and coordination of national phytosanitary (statutory plant health) research programmes at the EU level through networking of research funding activities.

The ERA-Net EUPHRESCO II second call relates to the topics of:

• EPITRIX: Epitrix (flea beetle) species, life cycles and detection method (Danish  partners)
• MONOCHAMUS: Monochamus spp., insect vectors of Bursaphelenchus xylophilus (Transnational consortia involving both Danish and Slovenian research partners)
• WOOD CHIP: Diagnostics and risk management for plant health threats in wood chips and bark for bio-energy imported from other continents (Transnational consortia involving both Danish and UK research partners)

The submission deadline for Expressions of Interest ends on Monday 8th July 2013, 17:00 CET. More information on the call can be found here.
 

NERC wishes to award catalyst funding to facilitate the take up of NERC science and expertise by the oil and gas industry. As part of developing a broader, strategic approach to mapping and engaging the sector, including identifying future opportunities and approaches to engagement, we are looking to enable new partnerships and collaborations between researchers and the oil and gas industry and to capitalise and build on existing partnerships and collaborations through a range of approaches. 

Funding is for short-term projects of c. 6-12 month duration, with the majority of money being spent in the current financial year.
The call will open in Je-S on 28th June 2013 (TBC) with a closing date of 16:00 on 16th July 2013. Further information can be found here.
 

The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) is seeking partners - major companies, academics and SMEs to help develop a new type of gearbox and engine air charging system for use in heavy duty vehicles (HDV).

The ETI has issued two Request for Proposals (RfP). The first is looking to develop a new type of gearbox - known as Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT). Successful proposals will be required to meet the needs of a wide range of on and off highway vehicles and machines, whilst delivering a breakthrough in transmission efficiency.

The second is looking at developing an engine air system, which can, but not exclusively include turbo charging or supercharging systems. This is to design an air charging system that can provide efficiency benefits across both the HDV land and marine fleets.

Copies of the two requests for proposals are available here. The deadline for the notification of an intention to submit a proposal for the CVT project is the 24^th June 2013 while the closing date for submissions is 5^th July 2013. Meanwhile, the closing date for an intention to submit a proposal for the engine air system is the 8^th July 2013 with a closing date of 19^th July 2013.

The general purpose of this tender is to develop a pilot approach for assessing potential vulnerabilities to climate change across sectors and regions in the EU. This must translate into a dataset and methodology on how to assess direct and indirect economic implications of past climate disasters, as well as an approach on how to generalise such assessment to projected climate impacts.

Receipt of tenders or requests to participate are due by 1st August 2013 at 16:00 CET and further information can be found here.

The Technology Strategy Board launched the Future Cities Demonstrator competition in the summer of 2012. In a first phase 29 UK cities were funded to carry out feasibility studies that showed the value that could be created by integrating city systems. This allowed UK cities to explore new approaches to delivering a good local economy and excellent quality of life, whilst reducing the environmental footprint and increasing resilience to environmental change. The feasibility studies can be accessed here.

We have now funded Glasgow to carry out a large scale demonstration of integrating city systems, and smaller demonstration projects in Bristol, London and Peterborough. These projects will enable businesses to test, in practice, new solutions for connecting and integrating city systems.

The Technology Strategy Board has also worked with UK cities that participated in the Demonstrator competition to identify shared challenges facing local authorities where viable solutions are not yet available in the market. These challenges are in the areas of energy, data and transportation. An SBRI competition will be run to tackle these challenges. In Phase 1, contracts of up to £100,000 will be awarded to companies to work directly with groups of cities for 6 months to explore feasible solutions, and to develop proposals for prototyping and implementation.

For phase 2 of the competition, cities have volunteered to come together around these pressing challenges, and will offer themselves as ‘test beds' for the winning companies to develop, refine and deploy their prototypes. Contracts of up to £1m will be awarded to develop, deploy and test integrated urban solutions.

Further informaiton can be found here, the competition opens 1st July 2013.

The European Commission, Directorate-General for the Environment, has published a call for proposals regarding measures towards sustaining the BEST preparatory action to promote the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services in EU outermost regions and overseas countries and territories.

The contract covers the setting up of a structure/platform that shall enable and facilitate information-sharing on availability of funding from different sources (EC but also Member States and other possible partners — from international financial institutions to NGOs to businesses) for projects aimed at the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services in EU outermost regions and overseas countries and territories.

This structure/platform will make information available between the finance providers and possible project implementers, as well as contribute to the development of required support mechanisms including regional ecosystem profiles.

For more information please go here. The closing date for applications is the 2^nd September 2013.

Got a great business project that could make Europe greener but don't know how to get it off the ground? The 2013 Eco-innovation call for proposals may be for you!

The European Commission grants up to 50% co-funding to finance green ideas: the total budget available for the 2013 Call is almost 31.6 Million Euros.

Calls support Eco-innovative projects in different sectors which aim at the prevention or reduction of environmental impacts or which contribute to the optimal use of resources. However, more specific priorities are being set up considering their important environmental impact and policy priorities of the European Union:

• Materials Recycling
• Sustainable Building Products
• Food and Drink Sector
• Water
• Greening businesses

The Call CIP-EIP-ECO-INNOVATION-2013 will close on 5th September 2013 at 17:00:00, Brussels local time. Proposals received after this deadline will not be evaluated. For more information please see here.

STFC External Innovations runs a Challenge Led Applied Systems Programme (CLASP) to support the application and commercialisation of STFC research in the four key global research challenge areas identified in the STFC Futures Programme. These four areas are Energy, Environment, Healthcare and Security. Individual annual calls are aligned to specific challenge areas.

STFC is now offering £1.5M to fund a range of projects from short feasibility studies to large developmental projects that will use STFC funded research to solve key challenges in the Energy sector.
There is a two stage application process for CLASP. Applicants are invited to submit a short outline, which is assessed by the CLASP panel. Short listed applicants are then invited to develop a full proposal with the assistance of CLASP panel members assigned as mentors.

The closing date for applications is 10th September 2013 and more information can be found here.
 

The opportunity for the Technology Strategy Board, NERC and its partners is to create value for the UK economy, both at home and abroad by supporting the creation of new solutions and services that provide specific commercial benefits and/or address business risk and increase resilience through the integration of environmental data with other sources. These solutions may require new consortia to tackle a specific business problem, or need access to data not currently ‘off the shelf’ and not available from a single source.
 
The Technology Strategy Board and NERC have allocated up to £3million to invest in a number of business led, collaborative feasibility studies which will establish the proof of market for environmental data-led solutions and should address a specific business issue from one of the following areas:

• Energy
• Transport
• Built Environment
• Agriculture and Food
• Financial Services

The competition will open 30th September 2013 and closes 13 November 2013. More detail on the competition will be available here in due course.