The EU 6th Framework Programme for Research (FP6) is the largest ever international cooperation research framework.
The European Union experience from the previous Framework Programmes for Research has been extremely positive. The collaborative research has helped to consolidate Europe’s lead in a number of technology areas like sustainable development, safety standards, mobile communication, and aeronautics. International collaborative research has helped to bring innovative ideas quickly to a global market and also to build platforms for trade in the form of common technical norms and standards.
The focus of FP6 is the collaboration between European researchers. Each research project must have at least 3 partners from different EU Member Countries and Associated States (Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Israel). Another characteristic is that participants in projects are not only from research institutes or universities, but also from industry or public authorities.
FP6 covers all areas of research:
- Information Society Technology (IST)
- Life Science, Genomics and Biotechnology for Health
- Nanotechnologies, intelligent materials and new production processes
- Aeronautics and Space
- Food quality and safety
- Sustainable Development (energy, surface transport, global change and ecosystems)
- Citizens and Governance in a knowledge based society
- Policy support and anticipating scientific and technological needs
To see more on subject areas of research, please click the following link.
The European Union welcomes partners from Japan to join FP6
Partners from Japan are encouraged and very welcome to participate in FP6 projects.
European partners become aware that Japan has high-level scientists and research institutions, as well as innovative companies of a huge potential.
Fellowships
In the chapter for mobility of FP6, the call will announce international fellowships. Of particular interest for Japan are the followings:
- Individual fellowships of up to two years for top Japanese scientists to perform research at a European research organisation (the application must be submitted by the hosting research institution)
- Individual fellowships of up to two years for European scientists to perform research in a Japanese organisation (open for all areas of scientific research).
- Japanese institutions can join European training networks for early stage researchers and beginning scientists – including international PhD programmes.
For more information on fellowships, please click the following link.
Experts
The European Commission seeks independent experts who will help to evaluate project proposals and who will help to supervise FP6 projects. Japanese individual experts are encouraged to submit their application. It is also possible for organisations to submit lists of experts.
Search for research partners
The first step to join any proposal to a collaborative research project is to find a partner. The EU research website (www.cordis.lu) offers a sophisticated partner searching facility. It also allows to search the expressions of interests, where over 12000 European researchers and research teams have published their interests for FP6 projects. They are all looking for partners.
All information about FP6 and the research calls are published on the following website.
- EU research website (http://www.cordis.lu)
The information particularly related to IPR under FP6 can be found at the following site.
- Protection and Exploitation of Patents and Utility Models in the FP6
(http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org/documentos/docsPublicacion/html_xml/8_ES_ProtectionExploitation[0000006332_00].html)
