Alliance4Life Secured Funding for the Next Three Years

Alliance4Life’s new project A4L_ACTIONS, submitted under Horizon 2020 programme, has been selected for funding. Alliance4Life’s next three years will thus be co-financed with a grant of 2 mil. EUR, which will allow to turn a number of already successfully piloted good practices into actions. The new project will further strengthen the international reputations of Alliance4Life and CEITEC Masaryk University as its leader in terms of improving the culture and governance of the health research-performing institutions, and in serving as an inspiration for research policy reforms in Central and Eastern Europe.

Despite considerable investments from the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF), there are still large differences in Research and Innovation (R&I) performance between various countries in Europe. This issue has a major socio-economic impact and political consequences especially in the lower-performing regions of the EU. The R&I gap in the health sector has a profound effect on distribution of research funding from the EU Framework Programmes and hinders therefore also the overall impact of R&I results on health and life quality of the European citizens.

The participating institutes of the A4L_ACTIONS project, aim to address the roots of health research and innovation gap by improving institutional culture, and governance in the lower-performing Central and Eastern European countries. “Our goal is to further increase attractiveness of our members for international collaborations with advanced European countries and to create spill-over effects in the whole region,” explains Zlatuše Novotná, the project coordinator. The Alliance4Life is today an established network of progressive health research institutions and universities based in the Central and Eastern Europe. The member institutes successfully piloted good practices and would like to build upon achieved results.

Alliance4Life ACTION is a continuation of the successfully implemented Alliance4Life project that was kick-started in Brno three years ago, under the coordination of CEITEC Masaryk University. The alliance connects progressive Life Science institutions from Central and Eastern Europe. Its mission is to support and strengthen European research excellence and the impact of scientific research on society, human health, and quality of life. The 10 founding members formalized the alliance as a permanent structure in October 2019 in Vilnius through the signature of Memorandum of Understanding and continued with their collaboration also during the difficult year 2020. Two new member institutions from Bulgaria and Romania were invited to join the A4L_ACTIONS project that will start from May 2021.

All participating institutes are committed to work towards culture fostering excellence through piloting peer-evaluation and assessment of institutional practice with a clear aim to professionalize research administration in the CEE region. The partners will work together to initiate new international projects with advanced partners and collaborations with industry. A lot of attention will be paid to career development of researchers, nurturing talent and scientific networking. The partners are planning to raise competences of Technology Transfer specialists and to create industry relations platform linking academia and industry. A big advantage is also CEITEC´s membership and active involvement in another important alliance – EU-LIFE, that connects leading western-European life science institutes. This bridge between West and East allows for best practise sharing across the two regions and spill-over effect across entire Central and Eastern Europe.

Source and photo: PRESS RELEASE IN ENGLISH

Press release (CZ)

Alliance4Life Partners:

Masaryk University (CEITEC MU – Central European Institute of Technology), Czech Republic

St. Anne’s University Hospital Brno (FNUSA-ICRC – International Clinical Research Center), Czech Republic

Biomedical Research Center of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (BMC SAS), Slovakia

Medical University of Łodz (MUL), Poland

University of Zagreb School of Medicine (UZSM), Croatia

University of Tartu (TU), Estonia

Vilnius University – Faculty of Medicine (VU), Lithuania

Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis (LIOS), Latvia

University of Ljubljana (UL), Slovenia

Semmelweis University (SU), Hungary

Medical University Sofia (MUS), Bulgaria

Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy Bucharest (UMFCD), Romania