Climate-KIC welcomes new Health and Raw Materials partnerships into the EIT community

Climate-KIC welcomes two new strategic partnerships to boost innovation and tackle health and raw materials challenges into the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) community.

The first three EIT partnerships were selected in 2009: Climate-KIC, EIT ICT Labs and KIC InnoEnergy. The EU has decided to expand the EIT’s activities over the 2014 to 2020 period within the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation and has increased its budget to €2.7 billion.

Yesterday (9 December), the EIT announced the winners of the new call for EIT Health and EIT Raw Materials.

Like Climate-KIC, they form integrated European partnerships of higher education, business and research – Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) – and aim to tackle a major societal challenge. Climate-KIC works on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Tibor Navracsics, EU Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, said: “Ageing societies and our dependence on raw materials pose serious challenges to the EU. Science and innovation have a crucial part to play in tackling them. I am therefore very pleased to see the EIT getting these two strategic partnerships underway.”

The winners

The winners of the EIT’s 2014 Call for Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) Proposals are the pan-European consortia InnoLife and RawMatTERS, bringing together more than 150 partners from 20 EU Member States.

“The outstanding factor behind the decision was the potential of the winners to create innovations needed to address critical challenges for today’s societies,” said Martin Kern, EIT Interim Director.

“EIT Health and EIT Raw Materials are excellent partnerships that will generate impact, in terms of growth and job creation, which are at the heart of the Europe 2020 Strategy and President Juncker’s Commission top priorities,” said Kern.

Successes

Demonstrating the success of the EIT formula, Climate-KIC recently announced that its unique Accelerator has so far helped 45 European cleantech start-ups to collectively raise €59 million in external investment.

To date, the EIT’s KICs collectively bring together more than 500 leading partners from all over Europe, for the first time fully integrating business, research and higher education.

Since 2010, the EIT KICs have incubated more than 450 business ideas and created 75 innovative start-ups. 165 knowledge transfers and adoptions have taken place and 61 new products and services have been launched. The first 215 students have already graduated with EIT labelled degree programmes.

Climate-KIC currently has centres in France, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK, a Nordic centre in Denmark and is represented in the EU regions of Valencia, Central Hungary, Emilia Romagna, Lower Silesia, Hessen and the West Midlands.

The EIT will launch the next call for KIC Proposals in 2016 focusing on Food4Future and Added-value Manufacturing with a further call tentatively planned for 2018 addressing Urban Mobility.

For more information about the new KICs, visit the EIT website.