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10 January 2025
EVALUATION results
Published: 18.04.2024
Deadline: 18.09.2024
Available budget: EUR 72,500,000
The results of the evaluation for each topic are as follows:
|
HUMAN-03-01 |
Number of proposals submitted (including proposals transferred from or to other calls) |
27 |
Number of inadmissible proposals |
0 |
Number of ineligible proposals |
1 |
Number of above-threshold proposals |
19 |
Total budget requested for above-threshold proposals |
444,267,401.95 € |
Number of proposals retained for funding |
2 |
Number of proposals in the reserve list |
1 |
Funding threshold |
14.5 |
Number of proposals with scores lower or equal to 15 and higher or equal to 14 |
3 |
Number of proposals with scores lower than 14 and higher or equal to 13 |
4 |
Number of proposals with scores lower than 13 and higher or equal to 10 |
12 |
Summary of observer reports:
Observer report for topics HUMAN-03-01, 02 and 04:
Based on the achieved results the overall quality of the evaluation is rated as “very good”. The topics in this report were monitored by a team of two Independent Observers. The entire observation process was conducted remotely through analysis of documentation on the SEP system and consensus and panel meetings held in the video conferencing system (Cisco Webex). The Independent Observers (IO) verified that the procedures set out or referred to in the EU Funding & Tenders Online Manual are followed, drew the attention of Commission staff to any potential deficiencies; and compiled a report with findings and recommendations aiming to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the evaluation process. Scale of the evaluation task as well as its complexity were challenging but within the boundaries of the professional and personal capacities of the experts who were invited to evaluate the proposals received in response to this Call. The exercise was very well prepared and managed excellently by the Call and Topic Coordinators and their teams. The Commission staff is to be commended for their professionalism during the exercise. The organisation and scheduling of evaluator briefings, and consensus meetings was carried out with considered efficiency and effectiveness. The Independent Observers are satisfied that the evaluation process conformed to the applicable rules and required standards. The evaluation process was fair, efficient, and effective and the throughput time of the evaluation process was good. The Commission staff is to be commended for the support provided to the observers during their task. procedures and tools were efficient, reliable and user-friendly. All evaluation procedures monitored by the observers were implemented in conformity with the applicable and agreed rules. All experts and involved actors adhered strictly to the guiding principles of independence, objectivity, accuracy, and consistency. No significant deviations have been observed or reported to the observers. The observers have given careful consideration to recommendations which were discussed during the checkpoint meeting with EU Staff. Based on observations the following recommendations can be derived:
Observer report for topic HUMAN-03-03:
The IO finds that the evaluation followed the applicable rules for the call, and that it was competently evaluated in a fair and equitable manner by the experts and continuously monitored by the Agency staff. The IO did not observe any event or activity that gave rise to specific concern that might have jeopardised the fairness of the evaluation. HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-03-03: 23 proposals were submitted; 1 proposal accepted for funding. The expert team evaluating the proposals were perfectly gender balanced and from the broadest possible national representation.
We recently informed the applicants about the evaluation results for their proposals.
For questions, please contact the Research Enquiry Service.
19 September 2024
PROPOSAL NUMBERS
Call HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-03 has closed on the 18/09/2024.
183 proposals have been submitted.
The breakdown per topic is:
HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-03-01: 27 proposals
Evaluation results are expected to be communicated in December 2024.
03 September 2024
To the applicants of topic HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-03-01:
NB: With regards to the previous update on this topic and the fact that, due to a technical problem, the ownership control declaration (annex to be uploaded) was missing in the Portal Submission System, the Commission will exceptionally allow the submission of this annex at a later stage as needed and upon request.
Be reassured that the assessment of the ownership control declaration will not affect the outcome of the evaluation. The evaluation will focus on the Application form (Part A) and Technical description (Part B), which need to be completed and submitted in the Portal Submission System by the established deadline of 18/09/2024 17:00 Brussels time.
02 September 2024
To the applicants of topic HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-03-01:
Dear applicants,
Please note that the mandatory annex ownership control declaration has been added to the Portal Submission System. It is now possible to submit the annex next to Part B application.
The ownership control declaration annex must be filled in by project participants as part of the application. All declarations must be assembled by the coordinator and uploaded in a single file in the Portal Submission System.
We apologise for the inconvenience caused.
May 14, 2024 2:00:03 PM
Dear applicant,
Please note that there was an error in the Part B template available for download for the topics HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-03-01
The correct version is entitled “Standard Application Form (HE RIA and IA)” and indicates a page limit of 45 pages.
The correct version is the one now available in the submission system. Please make sure that you use the correct version before proceeding further in the drafting of your proposal.
We apologise for the inconvenience.
TOPIC ID: HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-03-01
Type of grant: Call for proposals
General information
Programme: Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON)
Call: A human-centred and ethical development of digital and industrial technologies (HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-03)
Type of action: HORIZON-RIA HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions
Type of MGA: HORIZON Action Grant Budget-Based [HORIZON-AG]
Status: Forthcoming
Deadline model: single-stage
Planned Opening Date: 23 April 2024
Deadline dates: 18 September 2024 17:00 (Brussels time)
Topic description
ExpectedOutcome:
Projects are expected to contribute to one or more of the following outcomes:
Scope:
Large artificial intelligence (AI) models refer to a new generation of general-purpose AI models (i.e., generative AI) capable of adapting to diverse domains and tasks without significant modification. Notable examples, such as OpenAI's GPT-4V and META’s Llama 2 or DinoV2, have demonstrated a wide and growing variety of capabilities.
The swift progression of large AI models in recent years holds immense potential to revolutionize various industries, due to their ability to adapt to diverse tasks and domains. For them to achieve their potential, access to vast data repositories, significant computing resources, and skilled engineers is required. A promising avenue of research is the development of multi-modal large AI models that can seamlessly integrate multiple modalities, including text, structured data, computer code, visual or audio media, robotics or IoT sensors, and remote sensing data.
This topic centres around the development of innovative multimodal large AI models, covering both the training of foundation models and their subsequent fine-tuning. These models should show superior capabilities across a wide array of down-stream tasks. The emphasis is both on integrating new input data modalities into large AI models and on developing multimodal large AI models with either significantly higher capabilities and/or the ability to handle a greater number of modalities.
Moreover, projects should contribute to reinforcing Europe's research excellence in the field of large AI models by driving substantial scientific progress and innovation in key large AI areas. This includes the development of novel methods for pretraining multimodal foundation models. Additionally, novel approaches to effective and efficient fine-tuning of such models should be pursued.
Research activities should explore innovative methodologies for enhancing the representation, alignment, and interaction among the different data modalities, thereby substantially improving the overall performance and trustworthiness of these models. Advances in efficient computation for the pre-training, execution and fine-tuning of foundation models to reduce their computational and environmental impact, and increasing the safety of models are also topics of interest.
Proposals should outline how the models will incorporate trustworthiness, considering factors such as explainability, security, and privacy in line with provisions in the upcoming Artificial Intelligence Act. Additionally, the models should incorporate characteristics that align with European values, and provide improved multilingual capabilities, where relevant.
Proposals should address at least one of the following focus areas:
Each proposal is expected to address all of the following:
Proposals should adopt a multidisciplinary research team, as appropriate, to cover all the above issues.
Proposals should adhere to Horizon Europe's guidelines regarding Open Science practices as well as the FAIR data principles. Open access should be provided to research outputs - including training datasets, software tools, model architecture and hyperparameters, as well as model weights - unless a legitimate interest or constraint applies. Additionally, proposals are encouraged to deliver results under open-source licenses.
All proposals are expected to embed mechanisms to assess and demonstrate progress (with qualitative and quantitative KPIs, benchmarking and progress monitoring, including participation to international evaluation contests, as well as illustrative application use-cases demonstrating concrete potential added value), and share communicable results with the European R&D community, through the AI-on-demand platform, and Common European data spaces, and if necessary other relevant digital resource platforms in order to enhance the European AI, Data and Robotics ecosystem through the sharing of results and best practice.
Proposals are also expected to dedicate tasks and resources to collaborate with and provide input to the open innovation challenge under HORIZON-CL4-2023-HUMAN-01-04. Research teams involved in the proposals are expected to participate in the respective Innovation Challenges.
This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on AI, data and robotics.
Specific Topic Conditions:
Activities are expected to start at TRL 2-3 and achieve TRL 4-5 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.
Topic destination
A human-centred and ethical development of digital and industrial technologies (2023/24)
This destination will directly support the following Key Strategic Orientations (KSOs), as outlined in the Strategic Plan:
Proposals for topics under this Destination should set out a credible pathway contributing to the following expected impact:
The priorities in this domain are aligned with the objectives of the Digital Decade to build secure and sustainable digital infrastructures and to support the digital transformation of businesses and public services. It will directly support individual innovators (researchers, developers, high-tech SMEs and start-ups, etc.) engaged in developing the technologies for a trustworthy and human-centric digital environment, building on a more resilient, and decentralised internet architecture and enabling new social and business models respecting European values.
In particular, the Digital Decade and its compass set a target 80% of citizens using a digital ID solution by 2030. In order to achieve this target, Europe needs to build an Internet of Trust empowering end-users with more control over their data and their digital identity. The Internet of Trust will also mobilise innovators towards more sustainable and secure internet infrastructures, supporting the Digital Decade objective of setting up 10000 climate neutral highly secured edge nodes. Finally the R&I priorities in this domain will fully support the international dimension of the digital decade by promoting the EU human-centred approach with key international partners.
As Europe takes the lead in the green and digital transitions, workers, regions, and societies are faced with extremely fast transformations, and will be differently affected by these changes, creating opportunities for inclusive technological and social development, but also carrying the risk of increased inequalities. The rapid adoption of new technologies offers an immense potential for improved standards of living, safer mobility, better healthcare, new jobs, or the personalisation of public services. At the same time, it presents risks such as skills mismatches, digital divides, customer lock-in, or serious breaches of security or privacy.
As Europe sets off on its path to recovery towards a greener, digital and more resilient economy and society, the need to improve and adapt skills, knowledge and competences becomes all the more important. All communities have the right to benefit from these new digital and green developments, leading to a more inclusive society, increased trust and a better adoption of new products and services. Developments in digital and enabling technologies have the potential to enhance social inclusion, can inform up-skilling training programmes and ensure a two-way engagement with society with regard to developing technologies.
The issue of trust has become central in the use of technologies, following revelations about the exploitation of personal data, large-scale cybersecurity and data breaches, and growing awareness of online disinformation. As outlined in the White Paper on Artificial Intelligence (COM(2020)65), for AI technologies, trust requires in particular improving transparency (explainability, expected levels of performance). For the Internet, increasing trust requires new tools and services to ensure that GDPR is a reality for end-users.
It is also an opportunity for Europe to re-gain presence on the consumer electronics market, by developing new interactive applications in various sectors with solutions meeting European values and requirements in terms of privacy and security. The COVID-19 crisis has also shown how important distance and innovative learning is for society.
Actions under this Destination will support EU objectives of inclusiveness, by supporting a human-centred approach to technology development that is aligned with European social and ethical values, as well as sustainability. These actions will further contribute to addressing the challenges faced by European industry and support the creation of sustainable, high-quality jobs by targeting skills mismatches, the need to empower all workers, and ethical considerations relating to technological progress.
Actions should devote particular attention to openness of the solutions and results, and transparency of the research process. To ensure trustworthiness, public awareness and support, wide adoption by user communities for the benefit of society, actions should promote the highest standards of transparency and openness. Actions should ensure that the processes and outcomes of research and innovation align with the needs, values and expectations of society, in line with Responsible Research and Innovation.
This Destination is structured into the following headings, which group topics together with similar outcomes to address a common challenge:
The objective of this heading is to ensure autonomy for Europe in AI, leading the way in research, development and deployment of world-class technologies that are beneficial to humans individually, organisationally and societally, and that adheres to European values, such as the principles reflected in our fundamental rights and environmental sustainability. Technologies need to be developed that industries and citizens will trust, so and that they could be applied in a wide range of applications and industrial sectors. Trustworthy AI is particularly key in applications such as (but not limited to) healthcare or in diverse critical infrastructures such as energy and transportation.
Some topics of this heading are under the co-programmed Partnership ‘AI, Data and Robotics’.
Proposals are encouraged to link with relevant European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and its Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), in particular the EIT Digital.
EIT Digital plays role in shaping technologies and innovations that work for people. At least two of its focus areas, Digital Wellbeing and Digital Cities, address directly topics such as ethical artificial intelligence, predictive analytics or augmented and virtual reality that are relevant to this areas. The solutions will benefit from the increasing will of citizens to participate in the sharing economy. EIT Digital, through projects with cities for example, improves engagement and inclusiveness of the citizens and of the visitors by increasingly organising and exposing data, especially in real time and along with analytics and machine learning. Augmented and virtual reality of the cities are another facet of exposing or simulating city data from the past, present or future to the benefit of citizens.
The issue of trust in the internet has become central, following revelations about the exploitation of personal data, large-scale cybersecurity and data breaches, and growing awareness of online disinformation. A 2019 survey[[]] shows that half of the global internet users are more concerned about their online privacy compared to a year previously. Distrust in the Internet is causing people to change the way they behave online, for example by disclosing less personal information. Users also express an increasing level of distrust of social media platforms.
The objective of this heading is to develop a trustworthy digital environment, built on a more resilient, sustainable, and decentralised internet, to empower end-users with more control over their data and their digital identity, and to enable new social and business models respecting European values.
Due to its low presence in the consumer electronics industry, Europe is increasingly dependent on external providers in this area. This raises concerns about its digital sovereignty in crucial domains such as digital interaction services that are being adopted by a growing number of European users and industries. The COVID-19 crisis has shown how important distance and innovative learning is for society, our children, their parents and their teachers, maintaining social and educational links under challenging circumstances. Emerging technologies such as virtual reality, eXtended Reality or immersive environments provide numerous opportunities for personalised, innovative, efficient and inclusive learning, for learners of all ages, gender and condition
The objective of this heading is to gain industrial leadership in eXtended Reality technologies and immersive environments, while ensuring the European values of privacy, ethics and inclusiveness. It also aims to support the digital transformation of education through these technologies in particular.
This heading promotes various systemic approaches to encourage creativity and make the most of the technologies developed elsewhere within society and industry. They include testing ideas in local communities; support for IP, standardisation and industry-academia exchanges; art-driven design; and assessments of complex socio-economic systems. These are complemented by support for a network of National Contact Points (NCPs), with a special emphasis on engaging with new actors.
Activities beyond R&I investments will be needed to realise the expected impacts: testing, experimentation, demonstration, and support for take-up using the capacities, infrastructures, and European Digital Innovation Hubs made available under the Digital Europe Programme; further development of skills and competencies via the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, in particular EIT Digital and EIT Manufacturing; upscaling of trainings via the European Social Fund +; use of financial instruments under the InvestEU Fund for further commercialisation of R&I outcomes; and links to the thematic smart specialisation platform on industrial modernisation.
The Digital Decade policy programme (“The Path to the Digital Decade”), sets a European approach for its digital transformation based on values and technological leadership.
In parallel, there is still a lack of systematic approaches to ensure a constructive role of culture in technology development in the spirit of methods to integrate non-technology innovation and social innovation.
Efforts will be pursued to help ensuring people are at the centre of the digital transformation, in line with our values and principles.
The Communication ‘Updating the 2020 Industrial strategy: towards a stronger Single Market for Europe’s recovery’ made clear that global leadership in technologies goes hand-in-hand with leadership in standard-setting and ensuring interoperability across the EU industrial ecosystems. EU industry needs European and international standards that underpin its twin digital and green transition. A minimal set of standards will also enable the creation of a soft layer for data sharing and exchange amongst EU industrial ecosystems and underpinning data spaces. Establishing global leadership in key priority standards such as cyber-security is also a critical matter for the competitiveness and resilience of EU industries. Global convergence on the same international standards helps reduce adaptation costs and strengthens EU and global value chains. Thus the topic of standards is an essential cross-cutting issue when it comes to the twin transition of the industrial ecosystems and making European industry more resilient.
Several digital decade targets for 2030 are addressed like tech up-take facilitated by interoperability standards, climate neutral highly secure edge notes and ethical principles for human-centred algorithms through international endorsed standards.
Standardisation can be an important factor for valorising EU R&I projects, allowing new technologies to enter into a more mature phase, favouring their applicability on a larger scale and hence promoting their uptake.
Bringing the research and innovation community early on into the standards-making process is key to identify the issues and priorities, share views on future developments and stakeholder needs, and to provide recommendations to the European Commission and European standardisation organisations for future standardisation needs. Putting standards into science is very important to anticipate and prepare the standards-development process in future areas.
The proposed international coordination and support actions are aligned with the Commission’s international priorities. They will help build strong international digital partnerships, and promote a human-centred digital agenda. International cooperation will further a level playing field and reciprocity while delivering new solutions to digital challenges. The proposed actions will be involved in trade and industrial policy aspects by promoting European technologies in key international markets. They will also support digital dialogues with partner countries.
Cooperation will be prioritised with Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore as part of our digital partnerships with countries in the Indo-Pacific region. The resulting project will foster links with relevant research institutions on R&I activities in the field of digital. It will also support the newly announced Trade and Technology Council with India.
Cooperation with countries in sub-Saharan Africa will stimulate R&I cooperation with the EU and promote EU values for a human-centric digital transformation. Cooperation between Africa and EU will expand on the existing outcomes of Africa-EU cooperation especially in the field of Innovation Hubs cooperation[[See in particular ICT 58 Call : https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/ict-58-2020]], sustainability of African digital ecosystems, reinforcement of the African private sector and contribution to Africa’s economic growth (including SDG attainment). It will also contribute to the overarching objectives of our continental partnership in full alignment with the principles of the Global Gateway.
Cooperation with Latin America will aim at exploiting the potential of the newly established BELLA network and implement the outcomes of EU-LAC dialogues in the context of digitalisation and R&I.
Additionally, international collaboration is encouraged or targeted in several thematic areas may also be addressed within the respective Joint Undertakings (Smart Networks and Services, EuroHPC, and Key Digital Technologies).
Expected impact
Proposals for topics under this Destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to a human-centred and ethical development of digital and industrial technologies, and more specifically to one or several of the following impacts:
Innovation Actions — Legal entities established in China are not eligible to participate in Innovation Actions in any capacity. Please refer to the Annex B of the General Annexes of this Work Programme for further details.
1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex Aand Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes
Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System
2. Eligible countries: described in Annex Bof the Work Programme General Annexes
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.
3. Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes
If projects use satellite-based earth observation, positioning, navigation and/or related timing data and services, beneficiaries must make use of Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (other data and services may additionally be used).
In order to achieve the expected outcomes, and safeguard the Union’s strategic assets, interests, autonomy, and security, participation in this topic is limited to legal entities established in Member States, associated countries, OECD and Mercosur countries, countries with which the EU cooperates under a Trade and Technology Council, and countries with which the EU has a Digital Partnership. Proposals including legal entities which are not established in these countries will be ineligible.
This decision has been taken on the grounds that, in the area of research covered by this topic, EU open strategic autonomy is particularly at stake. It is important to avoid a situation of technological dependency on a non-EU source, in a global context that requires the EU to take action to build on its strengths, and to carefully assess and address any strategic weaknesses, vulnerabilities and high-risk dependencies which put at risk the attainment of its ambitions.
For the duly justified and exceptional reasons listed in the paragraph above, in order to guarantee the protection of the strategic interests of the Union and its Member States, entities established in an eligible country listed above, but which are directly or indirectly controlled by a non-eligible country or by a non-eligible country entity, may not participate in the action unless it can be demonstrated, by means of guarantees provided by their eligible country of establishment, that their participation to the action would not negatively impact the Union’s strategic, assets, interests, autonomy, or security[[The guarantees shall in particular substantiate that, for the purpose of the action, measures are in place to ensure that:
a) control over the applicant legal entity is not exercised in a manner that retrains or restricts its ability to carry out the action and to deliver results, that imposes restrictions concerning its infrastructure, facilities, assets, resources, intellectual property or know-how needed for the purpose of the action, or that undermines its capabilities and standards necessary to carry out the action;
b) access by a non-eligible country or by a non-eligible country entity to sensitive information relating to the action is prevented; and the employees or other persons involved in the action have a national security clearance issued by an eligible country, where appropriate;
c) ownership of the intellectual property arising from, and the results of, the action remain within the recipient during and after completion of the action, are not subject to control or restrictions by non-eligible countries or non-eligible country entity, and are not exported outside the eligible countries, nor is access to them from outside the eligible countries granted, without the approval of the eligible country in which the legal entity is established.]].
The participants directly subject to this eligibility condition are not only beneficiaries, affiliated entities and associated partners but also subcontractors. Their participation is therefore subject to an ex-ante ownership control assessment by the EC and, if relevant, the EC acceptance of a guarantee approved by an eligible country[[Notwithstanding that this eligibility condition specifically applies to beneficiaries, affiliated entities, associated partners and subcontractors, applicants are reminded that the restrictions on place of establishment and control extend to all participants under the grant agreement. See MGA, Annex 5, SPECIFIC RULES FOR CARRYING OUT THE ACTION (— ARTICLE 18) Implementation in case of restrictions due to strategic assets, interests, autonomy or security of the EU and its Member States.]].
4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes
5.Evaluation and award:
Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex Dof the Work Programme General Annexes
Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual
Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes
6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes
7. Specific conditions: described in the [specific topic of the Work Programme]
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