EC Acceleration programs

Fractals - This is the first accelerator program realized at the BioSense Institute. It was financed by the EU FP7 framework, and its goal was to support the community of innovative ICT SMEs and Web Entrepreneurs to harvest the benefits of Future Internet Public Private Partnership initiative, by developing applications with high market potential, addressing the needs of the agricultural sector.

Katana - Emerging industries as key enablers for the adoption of advanced technologies in the agrifood sector” supported European SMEs in the agrifood value chain to simultaneously access knowledge, technology, capital and markets in order to respond to the global competitive environment. KATANA proposed a systemic approach by combining an innovative selection and funding scheme based on peer to peer evaluation and crowdfunding, a holistic portfolio of support services covering the entire KATANA lifecycle, and three large scale demonstrators capitalizing upon emerging industries.

Diatomic - The objective of this action was to attract the most talented and knowledgeable innovation consortia to the open calls to execute +15 high-quality experiments with highly innovative user-driven applications based on AME/SSI technologies. DIATOMIC devoted 48% of its funding to finance application experiments, prudently selected (after open calls) and based on technological excellence, market potential and the adoption of user-driven concepts, as well contribution of private funding and cross-border aspects of activities.

Parsec - PARSEC is an EU project which aspires to provide start-ups and SMEs with the necessary resources to develop and launch Earth Observation (EO) based products and services into the market. This has been realized through a comprehensive acceleration programme, offering a total of €2.5 Million euro equity-free funding to applicants, alongside coaching, training and market entry support. The project focuses on three emerging sectors: food, energy and environment.

agROBOfood - agROBOfood is dedicated to accelerating the digital transformation of the European agri-food sector through the adoption of robotic technologies. It will consolidate, extend and strengthen the current ecosystem by establishing a sustainable network of DIHs, that will boost the uptake of robotic solutions by the agri-food sector: a huge challenge requiring an inclusive approach involving all relevant European players.

IoF2020 - IoF2020 is operating in a field that can be characterized as extremely dynamic and innovative. New technologies, new devices, new applications, and new business models are making the field of IoT as a domain of continuous innovation. One of the mechanisms to keep the IoF2020 project up to date is the Open Call. The open call was included at midterm of the project and it generated an additional set of use cases complementary to the initial ones. The general objective was to include and make use of new opportunities that emerged in the 2 years period since submitting the proposal. The call was open to all legal persons eligible for Horizon 2020 funding. A panel of independent experts evaluated the applications based on the following criteria: clear description of the business challenge, contributing to at least one AgriFood challenge, clear IoT challenge, end users as partner in the proposal, technology applied at least at TRL 5 and target for TRL 7 or 8.

Smart Agri Hubs - In the light of the current COVID-19 crisis, it is essential to further stimulate the development of digital innovations, which can tackle the challenges currently faced by the agri-food sector. Considering this, SmartAgriHubs has investigated the possibilities for funding innovations that helps our sector in these trying times. The SAH Open Call will consist of a three-phase programme. The first phase is the RESPOND phase providing funding related to the COVID-19 crisis. During this phase, the SAH community tackled directly the challenges faced in the agri-food sector due to COVID-19. The focus of the RESPOND Open Calls was on hackathon type of activities proposing solutions to minimise the effects of the current crisis. Additionally, these activities will help identify what role digital innovations can play to mitigate the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the agri-food domain.