ITEA 4 · News item · Finally back together - ITEA Call 2022 launched at the ITEA PO Days and Family reunion in Helsinki

ITEA Call 2022 for project proposals was launched on 13 September in conjunction with the ITEA Project Outline (PO) Preparation Days which were held on 13 and 14 September in Helsinki. We were happy to finally get back together again with the ITEA Community after two years of meeting online. To celebrate this occasion, the PO Days were followed by an ITEA Family reunion on 14 and 15 September.

Strong combination of online and physical components

Building new projects and partnerships can best be done in a physical environment. That is what we have learned over the past two years. Nevertheless, the online events that were organised instead brought us some new insights as well. The ITEA PO Days 2022 event therefore combined the best practices of both online and physical events of the past, in order for participants to get the most out of their event participation.

The ITEA PO Days are always fully-packed days. To prepare participants well in advance and to optimise the time for networking and consortium building during the PO Days, an online preparation session, 11 online country information sessions and an online project idea pitch session (with 34 pitches) were organised prior to the physical event in Helsinki. The online Project idea tool and Partner search enabled the participants to already explore the 48 submitted project ideas and get in touch with potential partners.

Next to the plenary sessions in Helsinki, there was plenty of time for interaction during the poster session - in which 32 project ideas were presented – and the many lively brainstorm and workgroup sessions. The group discussions resulted in 17 plenary project idea presentations. This year, a record number of Public Authorities attended the event and combined their online Country information session with a poster in a dedicated poster area at the event, informing participants about national priorities, eligibility criteria and funding outlook.

A good turnout

This year around 310 participants from 21 different countries participated in the online PO Days sessions and 229 joined the PO Days event in Helsinki. The Netherlands, Turkey and Finland were among the top three countries in terms of participation, closely followed by Germany. Also Canada was again present with a large delegation in Helsinki.

With 52% returning participants and 48% newcomers in Helsinki, the ITEA PO Days confirm that the ITEA Community keeps growing and attracting new members while retaining the experienced project partners that can guide them.

With a high overall score of 4.0 our of 5.0, the physical ITEA PO Days in Helsinki were well appreciated by its participants.

Smart health strongly represented in Challenge landscape

The project ideas were clustered by 8 societal challenges, i.e. Smart cities, Smart communities, Smart energy, Smart industry, Smart health, Smart mobility, Smart engineering and Safety and Security. Although most challenges were well covered, the number of Smart health project ideas was very high (12), showing the impact again of this year's ITEA Customer workshop on this topic. Like previous years, Smart Engineering (7) and Smart Industry (7) remain important topics for the ITEA Community, equaled by the amount of Safety and Security (7) and Smart cities (6) project ideas.

ITEA Family reunion

In the afternoon of 14 September and the morning of 15 September, we celebrated the ITEA Community getting back together again during the ITEA Family reunion. The programme consisted of inspriring sessions with SME Stars and well-respected ITEA Family members, a keynote speech “Should innovation become maintenance?” by Sietske Rozie, Radiologist M.D. and the ITEA Awards of Excellence ceremony, combined with the opportunity to reunite for drinks, a dinner and a long-awaited chance to socialise.

ITEA Awards of Excellence

On 15 September, during the 2022 ITEA Awards of Excellence ceremony in Helsinki, four projects were awarded for their impressive results with great benefits for industry and society: CyberFactory#1 (award for Business impact), IMPACT (award for Innovation), PANORAMA (award for Standardisation) and OPTIMUM (award for 'Exceptional excellence' for outstanding results in all three categories).

Hosted by ITEA Vice-chairman Jean-François Lavignon, this ITEA Awards of Excellence ceremony not only presented the results of these projects, it also provided a great opportunity to learn from the best, as the project leaders and mentor shared what it takes and brings to create an award-winning project.

We are very proud that such impressive results were achieved within the ITEA programme, making the world a better, safer and healthier place.

Join ITEA Call 2022

If you were not able to participate in the ITEA PO Days 2022, but you are interested in taking part in ITEA Call 2022, you can still check the project ideas in the ITEA Project idea tool which is accessible at the ITEA Community website. Via this tool you can contact the project idea leaders via email in case you would be interested to join a Project Outline. In this overview you can see what kind of partners or expertise the projects are still looking for.

We wish everyone good luck with the preparations of their project proposal and are at your disposal in case you need support.

Missed out?

If you missed one of the sessions, recordings and presentations are available online here. Please note that the project-idea related information/presentation are only accessible for those with a signed NDA for ITEA Call 2022.