EU-funded projects

The aim of MovingLife is to deliver roadmaps for technological research, implementation practice and policy support with the aim of accelerating the establishment, acceptance and wide use of mobile eHealth solutions that will support lifestyle changes among citizens and improve disease management globally.

The roadmaps will address a broad group of fundamental issues such as: technology options for applications and services; options for new and improved medical guidelines; user empowerment, acceptance, ethics and privacy; socio-economic environments and policy and regulatory frameworks.

Mobile Healthcare (or mHealth) is a term that refers to the provision of medical services through the use of portable devices with the capability to create, store, retrieve, and transmit data via mobile communications. In technical terms, small devices are used to monitor patient-related data and actively communicate with a central information system; in buildings, communication takes place either over a mobile telephony or fixed line network coupled with WiFi. In open spaces, communication takes place via terrestrial (GSM, GPRS, 3G, 4G, WiMax) communication networks or low-orbit satellite communication.

NOCHEMFOOD is a Specific Targeted Research Project (STREP) funded by the European Commission within FP6-research and development, under the Food Quality and Safety Thematic Priority. The project will pursue the following objectives:

• develop a novel class of food additives based on mixtures of vegetal-based extracts, with the scope of substituting some currently used chemical additives, which are subject to regulation restriction and might be harmful for human health.
• fully characterize these products from the chemical, biochemical and microbiological point of view with the subsequent attempt to understand their mechanism of action. The extracts will be also tested for their potential mutagenic properties as well as the antimicrobial capability against undesirable or pathogenic micro-organisms.
• demonstrate the effectiveness of these novel vegetal-based mixture of compounds as preserving agents in some largely consumed foods in Europe. Target foods selected for this purposes are sausages and other food classes which will be selected and preliminarily evaluated during the course of the project.

Innova is in charge of project management, exploitation and dissemination activities.

The main driving idea of the project is the creation of conceptually new type of scaffolds able to be manipulated in situ by means of magnetic forces. This approach is expected to generate scaffolds with such characteristics as multiple use and possibly multipurpose delivery in order to repair large bone defects and ostheocondral lesions in the articular surface of the skeletal system. The provision in vivo of the scaffold with staminal cells or /and growth factors in order to drive the tissue differentiation process and parallel angiogenesis represents nowadays one of most challenging requests. The Consortium aims to elaborate, investigate and fabricate new kind of scaffolds – magnetic scaffolds (MagS) – characterized by strongly enhanced control and efficiency of the tissue regeneration and angiogenic processes. Such a magnetic scaffold can be imagined as a fixed “station” that offers a long-living assistance to the tissue engineering, providing thus a unique possibility to adjust the scaffold activity to the personal needs of the patient.

INNOVA will contribute to the financial and administrative management, exploitation and dissemination plan development.

Active P53 is an Integrated Project funded under FP6 aimed at research in the field of P53 protein for cancer applications.

INNOVA was in charge of activities related to IPR issues and supported project management activities.

The PROMISE project implements actions for realizing energy efficient behavior among residential households in islands. Good practices on energy efficiency schemes addressed to households, and mainly adopted on the partner island Samsø, will be exchanged and transferred to the target islands Iceland, Kos and Tenerife. Knowledge transfer will take place through capacity building workshops and awareness raising campaigns addressed to the island households, including energy home checks and further marketing strategies. Next to the households, the islands’ energy policy makers will be tackled for considering energy efficient consumer behavior in their islands’ energy action plans.

INNOVA is the coordinator of the project and will act as a facilitator of the transfer of good practices on energy efficiency schemes to the target islands and support the implementation of the capacity building workshops.

Market-up aims to identify barriers (both social and technical) and drivers for the market uptake of transport research results along Aeronautics, Air, Road, Rail and Waterborne transport. Via this identification process, a contribution will be made to the increased role of the transport sector in delivering a low carbon economy.  Market Up will also create the necessary tools to enable the achievement of two main goals:

• that research results are utilised by the market and
• that European research support covers all actors, including the weakest ones.

INNOVA is responsible for dissemination activities.

The main objective of HoverSpill system is the development of an innovative procedure for oil spill emergencies, with the greatest immediacy and efficiency possible during the intervention and effectiveness during the following remediation activities. HoverSpill project is mainly focused to operate on the transitional areas between land and sea, where shoals, difficult access areas, long distance from ports, make difficulties more relevant. The project will study the best approach for the prevention and for the remediation and will use a specific air cushion vehicle, completely amphibious and capable of working on land and water, in areas with high and soft mud, which can be used as a pontoon in floating conditions. It can be transported quickly on the road and can be parked on land or beaches near potential oil spill dangers with no need of harbours or other special structures necessaries for traditional vessels. New operational procedures and protocols will be defined in order to match the new technological approach and the vehicle characteristics.

INNOVA is coordinator of the project and i also responsible for project management, dissemination and exploitation.

The Project aim is to collect and analyse research results on efficiency and energy management systems (EMS) and identify opportunities for integration and applications to further complex or cross cutting areas. The main aim is to provide guidelines for economical sustainability of the industrialization of solution based on R&D current results to be mapped through two main steps:

• An analysis of the technical and scientific basis;
• Further improvement of features following the cutting-edge technologies and the market requirements

The project aims therefore to improve the R&D activities on technologies to make content more intelligent and self-adaptive and therefore to improve the EMS environments by:

• Bringing together researchers and industrial partners of the EMS fields to explore potential synergies, joint exploitation or the identification of further shared research paths among past and on-going projects in the domain;
• Defining a draft agenda that will outline the envisaged steps needed to let the R&D results potentialities comply as much as possible with the real applications needs;
• Favour the market exploitation of identified/supported technologies through the access to private capital and other available financial products

The seismic behaviour of connections in precast construction systems has been largely recognized as a crucial matter to be addressed both by the industry sector and by the related research community. In spite of this situation, the complexity of the problem and the variety of inherent issues to be dealt with in proposing design procedures for connections and precast structures as a whole, have made it difficult so far to conceive self-sufficient solutions and approaches of general validity. The aim of SAFECAST is to give effective answers to this need of self-sufficient, harmonized solution of the problems of correct seismic design of joints and connections in precast structures.

The innovative aspect of the project is the unified performance based perspective in which the problem of the characterization of the seismic behaviour of connections will be dealt with.

The immediate expected consequence of the proposed project is to improve competitiveness of precasting, as a sector, to promote a general increase in the quality and safety of constructions offered to the market and end-users in general, to enhance the contents of precast building solutions in terms of quality guarantee, performance optimization, reliability and safety in the event of an earthquake.

INNOVA supports the coordinator in the project management.

VALUE AGEING aims to foster cooperation between non‐commercial and commercial entities on a joint research project on the incorporation of Fundamental Values of the EU Info‐Communication Technology (ICT) for Ageing.

VALUE‐AGEING is a vital instrument to incorporate fundamental EU principles in industrial strategies and technological awareness in policy setting. Value Ageing builds upon the key principles of the SENIOR project.

The VALUE‐AGEING partnership represents a unique multidisciplinary combination, which will contribute towards educating a new generation of researchers in the field of ICT for ageing.

Innova is the “Scenario Exercise” leader, responsible for identifying specific technology areas in the field of ICT for ageing in which social, ethical, and fundamental right considerations are most required. In order to accomplish the task a set of scenarios related to the development of ICT for the ageing society will be identified and analyzed. The effects of each alternative scenario will be evaluated and their features assessed in order to be used as basis for future planning.

NAMDIATREAM will develop a cutting edge nanotechnology-based toolkit for multi-modal detection of biomarkers of most common cancer types and cancer metastases, permitting identification of cells indicative of early disease onset in a high-specificity and throughput format in clinical, laboratory and point-of-care devices. The project is built on the innovative concepts of super-sensitive and highly specific “lab-on-a-bead”, “lab-on-a-chip” and “lab-on-a-wire” nano-devices utilizing photoluminescent, plasmonic, magnetic and non-linear optical properties of nanomaterials. This offers groundbreaking advantages over present technologies in terms of stability, sensitivity, time of analysis, probe multiplexing, assay miniaturisation and reproducibility.

Innova will support project technical, administrative and financial management. Furthermore, INNOVA will be leader of dissemination, exploitation and training activities. It will conduct a study on a proper dissemination and exploitation strategy for the consortium, including IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) related issues and will provide training courses regarding IPR management, Technology Transfer, Business Planning, Research and Creativity.

The project ambition is to invent, design, synthesize, characterize, process, and to supply the missing materials in the fields of organic electronics and photonics and to develop appropriate patteming methods for micro and nano structuring of these materials that can be up-scaled to roll-to-roll technologies. The project is expected to generate fundamental knowledge and help to develop unprecedented technologies which will in turn heve a positive impact on competitiveness of European industries, environment, job creation, health, security, safety, and welfare of European citizens.

INNOVA will deliver training sessions on the management of the Intellectual Property to researchers and graduate students.

• safety services with location monitoring and travel and weather information and advice; 
• environmental services with information on local green initiatives such as bicycle and electric car hire and eco-accommodation booking.

INNOVA  is responsible for assisting in the development of supporting technical services, whilst also providing full and concise market studies and analysis that will influence the vitally important dissemination aspects of the project.  Regarding the dissemination, INNOVA is also looking to build relationship with tourism initiatives from across Europe that may be interested in developing a ‘copy’ of the application, adjusted to their own regions and cultural routes.

MOBICAP aims to tackle the funding gap for early-stage Mobile/Mobility Service Industries (MMSI) by creating an online coaching community which will speed up the selection of investment ready SMEs, train the chosen ones for the initial approach to investors, develop a tailored seed fund, identify co-investment best practices and stimulate the participation of private and public capital.

MOBICAP will facilitate access to finance for MMSI and in particular for start-ups addressing challenges such as the poor investment readiness in this sector.

The objective is to provide the EMMIA PLATFORM with a base of information and analyses to address the main options for designing assistance services for the Mobility and Mobile Services Industry (MMSI). The study focus on following main issues:

1. Understanding pros and cons of existing public and private funding instruments for the MMSIS sector;
2. Analysing existing private (VCs, Business Angels, Banks) and public (EU, national and regional funds) investment vehicles in the MMSI arena;
3. Drawing recommendations and suggestions for the development of future supports to the sector;
4. Market analysis of the MMSI in EU 27 and in the Lazio Region.

Innova acts as the main subcontractor and carries out the following  market studies:

• “MMSI Financing Supply side in EU 27" ; 
• “MMSI Financing Demand side in EU 27"; 
• “MMSI Financing Supply side in the Lazio Region (IT)".

The project SecureCHAINS aimed to actively involve researchers, SMEs, government institutions, major companies and big industrial enterprises to look at technologies capable of tackling a number of major topics in the field of security in Europe, such as: Security of citizens and of infrastructures and utilities, intelligent surveillance and border security, restoring security and safety in case of crisis.

The SecureCHAINS project contributed to a more competitive STSC. To reach this, the project’s consortium cooperated with the industry to gain a better understanding of the nature and structure of the STSC from prime contractors to subcontractors coming from the various tiers of the supply chains. The SecureCHAINS project identified and evaluated the potential of all the layers and associated actors involved on the STSC and enabled the actors to access to the identified main stakeholders and integrators.

The services provided:

• Project management
• Identify supply chains and stakeholders
• Detect untapped potential that can be integrated in the European STSC
• Engage innovative low tier suppliers in the STSC
• Contribute to the building of R&D competences in STSC
• Develop awareness building activities in Security related

REViSITE contributes to the formation of a European multidisciplinary ‘ICT for energy-efficiency’ research community by bringing together the ICT community and 4 important and complementary application sectors: grids, building/construction, manufacturing and lighting.

The objectives of REViSITE are to:

• Establish communication between sectoral ICT4EE communities in the 4 key industrial domains
• Develop a causal model on the impacts of ICT on energy efficiency and apply this methodology for identifying high-impact RTD priorities 
• Develop a cross-sectoral RTD roadmap by identifying and harmonising common topics
• Promote interoperability and standards
• Awareness raising campaigns

The goal of the PROGR-EAST project is to encourage the use of Pre Commercial Procurement (PCP), in 5 targeted European Countries (PL, CZ, SK, HU and SL), taking into consideration the specific needs and constraints for public procurement and in particular for the procurement of R&D existing in Eastern Europe, introducing innovative PCP strategies to public authorities, universities and industrial stakeholders, transferring successful experiences implemented in other European and external regions to implement innovative public services. In particular the PROGR-EAST project is focused on PCP for eGovernment, and for other innovative on line services for citizens and business.

Innova will be responsible for the mapping and analysis of PCP in Europe and the USA for which it will develop a handbook adressed to the specific needs of the target countries. Moreover, Innova will carry out the pilot actions and the project management activities.

Innova is coordinating the CEMSDI EU project aimed at capacity building of civil servants and other practitioners forming part of the service delivery chain in territories in need of active eInclusion and eGovernment policies. The project focuses in particular on Local Governments which serve around 8.000 inhabitants or fewer, where the digital divide tends to be the largest. For these administrative units, the empowerment of Public Officers and their administrations is vital in order to ensure the implementation of digital inclusion policies, which target the socially disadvantaged, modernise the organisations of public administration and efficiently deliver eGovernment and other local services.

The project will use the DLA (Digital Local Agenda) as a key instrument to achieve its goals. Five specific pilot actions at European level in Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the UK will validate the training and empowerment instruments created by the CEMSDI network of eGovernment experts so as to provide a trans-European methodology that can later be implemented in other territories in European countries.

The NET-EUCEN project creates, animates and manages a working network of stakeholders in the Governance and Policy Modelling domains belonging to all the European countries and with relevant knowledge of massive on-line service fruition and eInclusion policies and interests, thus covering the whole supply chain of the Service for Users (S4U). The project addresses the following specific objectives: 1) set-up a network composed by experienced S4U European stakeholders, sharing common practices, objectives and work methods; 2) assess new and innovative application scenarios and foster their industrialization, set-up all over Europe by supporting the multidisciplinary approach to the finding of innovative ICT solutions for citizens, public administrations and large communities.

Innova coordinates the mapping and the technology transfer activities and is responsible for events’ planning.

The NET-SHARE project intends to create, animate and manage a network of experienced ICT organizations, from several European countries, to share the experiences and knowledge on ICT initiatives and services for SMEs, gained mainly during participation in the SME domain of the former eTEN programme, and to make such experience and knowledge available for support to European SMEs, with a a particular focus on the promotion of wide and fast uptake of innovative solutions in microelectronic components, microsystems and embedded systems. The NET-SHARE project will address the following specific objectives:

• to set-up a network composed by experienced eTEN – SME domain – coordinators and participants, sharing common practices, objectives and work methods;
• to implement methods and tools for the sharing of experiences and best  practices on ICT initiatives and services for SMEs, training, development of specific approaches and standards and providing guidance for implementation of solutions in the SME market.

INNOVA will provide feedback about the experiences in eTEN/SMEs Support Project Overall Managing, Technology Transfer, Evaluation, Training, Technology Benchmarking and Technology Incubator. Innova will monitor and scout the best available ICT technologies on microelectronic components, microsystems and embedded systems, promoting innovative business models to invest in.

HYDRA, funded under FP6, aims to research, develop, and validate middleware for networked embedded systems that allows developers to create cost-effective, high performance ambient intelligence applications for heterogeneous physical devices. System developers are thus provided with tools for easily and securely integrating heterogeneous physical devices into interoperable distributed systems.

In the project, INNOVA is the work package leader of user validation and business model analysis and contributes to the preparation of the Hydra user application in the agricultural field.

GREX, funded under FP6, aims to create a conceptual framework and middleware systems to coordinate a swarm of diverse, heterogeneous physical objects (robotic vehicles) working in cooperation to achieve a well defined practical goal in an optimized manner. The project foresees the development of theoretical and practical tools for multiple system cooperation, bridging the gap between concept and practice.

INNOVA is in charge of conducting a market study on underwater robots applications and a technology exploitation plan to investigate the project’s potential applications.

Map-IT! Is co-funded under FP6. It aims to highlight the opportunities for research collaboration in ICT between Europe and the Mediterranean region. The project activities also include mapping and benchmarking exercises to identify key ICT players in the Mediterranean further creating an online database.

INNOVA is in charge of defining the mapping and benchmarking methodology, participate in the elaboration of the questionnaire addressed to target players, define work groups & expert panels and carry out workshops and reporting activities.

SOLAR-ICT, funded under the FP6, aims at facilitating joint collaboration between Europe and the Latin American and Caribbean region. The project identifies common developmental goals and defines a framework for strategic cooperation. The project involves the countries of Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay in the LAC region and Italy and Belgium in Europe.

INNOVA acts as project coordinator, responsible for coordinating the project partners, as the mapping and workshop organizations in Latin America; in addition, INNOVA is responsible for the management of the project portal.

eGovPoliNet aims to set up an international community in ICT solutions for governance and policy modelling. The international community of researchers and practitioners will share and advance research and insights from practical cases around the world. To achieve this, eGovPoliNet will build on experiences accumulated by leading actors bringing together the innovative knowledge of the field. Capabilities, tools and methods brought forward by academia, ICT industry, highly specialised policy consulting firms, and policy operators and governance experts from governments will be investigated and collected in an international knowledge base. Comparative analyses and descriptions of cases, tools and scientific approaches will complement this knowledge base. Therewith, the currently existing fragmentation across disciplines will be overcome.

INNOVA is responsible for the dissemination and sustainability of the Policy Community, promoting and ensuring project visibility and access to results, stimulating the debate on the topic and  exploring new ways to social policy modelling based on multi-disciplinary and collaborative constituency building.

The MASTER project aims to transfer innovative results, methodologies (related to both need analysis and multichannel training design and delivery) and utilities related to adaptive multichannel learning systems in order to support SME workers’ VET with new programs, channels and opportunities, increase the competitiveness of the SMEs involved, by creating new (and high quality) VET opportunities. The fundamental issue is to improve skills and competencies of polish workers to better communicate in foreign languages  to prepare them for the new requirements of the European labor market and educational system.

Innova will define the user requirements and prioritization, validate the platform and the deployment/exploitation strategy. Moreover, it will lead and coordinate the exploitation work package and participate to other activities with special regard to the practices and training expertise for micro and SMEs.

ImMediaTe aims at creating a sectoral platform supporting the innovative SMEs of the Digital Media and Creative sector by proposing a balanced mix of knowledge transfer, learning processes, investment attraction, and collaboration within clusters in order to unlock the potential of creative and innovative companies. In order this reach this goal ImMediaTe proposal will develop and test improved business support mechanisms with at least 250 KIS companies with a demonstrated growth potential. ImMediaTe will create the conditions for companies to be "investment-ready" and for investors to be "sector-aware". It will assist new ventures find and attract public and private investments, with special attention to international co-financing schemes.

INNOVA is mainly responsible for the assessment of research and skill needs of KIS Ventures, consisting in assessing the research and skills needs of KIS ventures in order to align the science and knowledge base to the entrepreneurial needs.

The INRES project aims to enhance the integration and the cooperation among three European insular regions, Canary Islands (Spain), Crete (Greece) and Samsø (Denmark) in the development of their regional RES policies and strategies through the establishment of a mutual learning process and collaborative relationships among regional research-driven clusters. The consortium, formed of 10 partners, targets the development of an inter-regional strategy, in the view of EC recommendations and support, for developing the take up of innovative measures included in the regional energetic plans that spin towards new collaboration among regional players, especially SMEs who are involved in the dynamics of the RES energy technology in the framework of a higher local economic efficiency and environment safeguard. Considering the previous experience in regional policies and networking, the project partners have decided to form the consortium based on the idea of putting together regional research-driven clusters dealing with renewable energy concerns and gathering entities from governmental, research and industrial side in order to address energy-related problems and create a common strategy for the development of renewable energy technologies, supporting finally the self-sustainability of the islands.

INNOVA is responsible for the regional assessment reports; the realization of the transversal activities such as template preparation, networking, learning activities.

The overall aim of the project, funded under the FP7, is to reinforce the dissemination and exploitation of project results of small and medium sized companies (SMEs) in the areas ECO-Innovation in such a way that they are supported to bridge the gap between research and exploitation, hence expand their businesses and, accordingly, raise their competitiveness in the world markets. The project will evaluate finished projects of 5th and 6th Framework Programme of the EU with the involvement of SMEs. By defining sub-clusters of ECO-Innovation (within biotechnology, food, energy and environment) the project will follow an interdisciplinary approach in order to support exploitation and dissemination of results in these clusters.

Through different type of activities such as interdisciplinary platform meetings at regional and EU levels as well as through specific road shows in partner countries, SMEs will be able to exchange good practices and to meet strategic exploitation partners. The results will represent important inputs for EC to reach the outmost impact and reinforce the exploitation activities of SMEs in Europe and to contribute positively to the creation of a lead market for Eco-Innovation in Europe.

INNOVA is responsible for the assessment and the clustering of SMEs in Eco-innovation.

The STARNETregio project has been conceived to increase the overall capacity of regional players in the regions Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy), Slovenia and the County of Rijeka (Croatia) to invest in RTD and carry out research activities in the marine industry, strengthening and developing the sector’s scientific and technological basis and ultimately the economic growth of the regions. This endeavour will be achieved by encouraging and supporting within the regions the performance of “regional research-driven marine clusters”, based on the triple helix model, associating universities and research centres (RTD), enterprises (industry cluster) and public regional authorities (PA).

The project focus lies specifically on shipbuilding, being an essential part of the regions’ industrial structure.

The project will contribute to reinforcing and improving the connections among multi-sector clusters of companies and research centres – mainly located in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, in Slovenia and in the County of Rijeka – to favour the development of innovation and competitiveness in the industry and service sectors of shipbuilding, yachting, marine appliances and related logistics.

INNOVA is a technical expert within the project and will take care of the cross-regional analysis and the setting up of the Regional Research Agendas for each region regarding their RTD activities and industry needs, fundamental to the subsequent elaboration of the Shared Research Agenda and the joint Action Plan. Furthermore, INNOVA will set up guidelines and templates for the methodological tools to be used within the project (e.g. elaboration of the questionnaire template for gathering comparable and efficient information from the research and industrial communities; structure of the final Action Plan).

RAF- REGIONS is a European project funded by the Regions of Knowledge Programme of the 7th Research Framework Programme. The objective of RAF- REGIONS is to increase the overall capacity of the Regions of Central Macedonia (Greece), Puglia (Italy) and Pazardjik (Bulgaria) in enhancing science and technology based economic development, focusing on the AgroFood Sector. The project partners comprise regional research-driven-clusters made up of Regional Authorities, SME Associations, Research Entities and Technology Consultants, all of them having the necessary experience and the institutional role to intervene and have a direct impact on research policies for the AgroFood sector.

INNOVA represents one of the three technology consultants in the project, taking care of the project activities to be conducted for the Puglia region. Main responsibilities include the performing of technology audits for the AgroFood SMEs as well as the mentoring of SME associations, regional authorities and R&D entities with regard to the state of research and technological development of the AgroFood sector in the region, including available funding mechanisms for supporting R&D efforts and possibilities for cooperation between R&D entities and the AgroFood sector. Furthermore, INNOVA is responsible for the development of the Joint Action Plan to be implemented following the end of the project. The Plan will support the sustainable economical development of the three participating regions by enhancing and exploiting their regional AgroFood R&D potential and the ability of regional SMEs to adopt research results.

WE-Mentor supports women active in R&D who plan to increase their participation in European research projects and trans-national cooperation. The mentee regions (India, Romania, Israel and Turkey) are trained on good practices in how to approach, motivate and facilitate woman entrepreneurs’ participation in EU RTD initiatives.

INNOVA supports the implementation process and the training activities.

Started in December 2007, the aim of the project is to develop a creativity and innovation management course, based on the principle that ideas and innovations are of great significance for Europe as a commercial location, and new product and service impulses are a prerequisite for the success of European companies on the world market.

The basis of the course content is formed by the "Marketing & Sales Idea Machine", a project that has developed a special creativity method for the generation of ideas. The involvement of young people in the creative process is a core element.

The project concept, converted into a (curriculum) course and circulated among partner countries throughout Europe, expands on some of these creativity methods.

The involvement of partners from the corporate world and/or from company-affiliated institutions, as well as from the training sector, initiates a mutual exchange of expertise and facilitates cooperation.

CREATIVE TRAINER makes sound training in the fields of creativity and innovation management possible for teachers and trainers in partner countries who are in turn best placed to utilize this expertise for training their pupils and trainees. This expertise is also intended to support the implementation of idea generation projects in companies. Well-trained individuals with qualifications in the fields of creativity and innovation management should be made available to commerce, and in turn through new ideas and innovations, raise the competitiveness of European companies.

INNOVA in the framework of the project is responsible for carrying out a training course in Italy and transfer the creativity modules to Italian companies, in particular to SMEs.

The major objectives of this Specific Support Action are to promote the role played by the Framework Programme in enabling International Cooperation on Global Change and Ecosystems research and to facilitate the uptake of the results of the research being carried out through a combined approach of awareness-raising and networking activities.

The project focuses in particular on two groups of Third Countries: Africa and the Newly Independent States since enhanced cooperation with these third countries would have a high impact on the implementation of both Research and Sustainable Development policies of the European Union.

The awareness-raising activities involve the dissemination of information on:

• the projects funded by the 6th Framework Programme in the Environment theme and which include partners from Third Countries;
• R&D players and networks in Europe and Third Countries.
• The consortium produces dedicated communication tools for this purpose, adapting them to the different target groups identified and disseminating them in the European Union, Candidate Countries, Associated Countries and Third Countries.

The networking activities aim to build interfaces/linkages between:

• the European scientific community and the Third Country scientific community;
• the scientific and the development cooperation communities;
• the network of National Contact Points to other networks in Third countries who are active in the promotion of the Framework Programme or could potentially play this role.
• The NCP community for environment, and related fields.

INNOVA is responsible for the administrative and financial management of the project, taking care of the day to day management of the project and acting as a permanent contact point for the whole consortium. Furthermore, INNOVA is involved in the awareness-raising process by identifying projects and networks dealing with environmental issues and including third country participants.