NEURON goals
The goal of the pilot NEURON was to expand the achievements of the Specific Support Action (SSA) of four funding bodies or project management organisations in a full ERA-NET. The coordinated action (CA) networks across 13 funding organisations, several of which are ministries. Since some of the participating countries have only recently become EU member states or are associated countries, NEURON is able to facilitate integration for countries with different status within and towards the EU.
The activities aim at the creation of a strategically operating group of relevant research funding organisations in Europe and a coordinated implementation of research programmes in the area of research into brain diseases. Eventually this will lead to a structured European health research policy in this area. The roadmap to this perspective comprises several steps:
- exchange of information about participants and their programmes, identification of common needs,
- quality assurance according to the results of the benchmarking activities,
- creation of a platform for programme managers and researchers as an interface between science and funding policy to feed into future national funding programmes,
- creation of a platform for programme managers to discuss the ethical, legal and social basis for research funding and the implementation of its results according to the existing laws and regulations,
- coordination of existing funding programmes and activities,
- synchronisation of planned national funding programmes and activities,
- development of concepts for future joint funding activities and programme opening,
- mutual opening of funding programmes with joint multilateral calls
Activities
To achieve the objectives of NEURON a series of joint activities and events have been designed to share knowledge and good practice and encourage new forms of transnational collaboration.
Key stages of the project:
Systematic exchange of information and good practices
Strategic activities
Implementation of joint activities
Transnational research activities
Dissemination
Events Include:
Network Steering Committee (NSC) meetings
Joint meetings of Executive Board (EB), NSC and Scientific Advisory Board (SAB)
Good practice workshops
Foresight workshops
Scientific and user group workshops
Output Includes:
Good practice guides
A comprehensive web based database on European research programmes on disease related neuroscience
Event reports
Project reports
