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Funding Agencies

European Union IST

European Union research activities are structured around consecutive four-year programmes, or so-called Framework Programmes. The Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) sets out the priorities - including the Information Society Technologies (IST) priority - for the period 2002-2006.

To qualify for EU funding, research projects must involve at least three sites in at least two countries. Proactive funding focuses resources on visionary and challenging long-term goals that are timely and have strong potential for future impact. Most recently the main robotics funding has been via the FP 6 "Beyond Robotics" proactive intitative. Other EU funding intiatives supporting robotics projects have included Neuro-informatics for "living" artefacts (FP5), and Life-Like Perception Systems (FP5).

By contrast to the top-down, focussed, proactive initiatives, the purpose of the FET Open scheme is to enable a range of ideas for future and emerging technologies to be explored and realised. The scheme is open to the widest possible spectrum of research opportunities that relate to Information Society Technologies.

European Science Foundation (ESF)

The European Science Foundation (ESF) also promotes high quality science at a European level. It acts as a catalyst for the development of science by bringing together leading scientists and funding agencies to debate, plan and implement pan-European initiatives.

ESF EUROCORES Programmes aim to complement the mission-oriented EU Framework Programmes with an effective and efficient mechanism for multinational collaboration within Europe in basic research. Bringing together national funding agencies, national research organisations and their analogues should overcome some of the disadvantages of scale in a distributed science policy system. Such a mechanism should maximise the investments made at national level.