ITEA PO Days 2024 - fully booked event with record number of project ideas

ITEA Call 2024 for project proposals was launched on 10 September in conjunction with the ITEA Project Outline (PO) Preparation Days, that took place on 10, 11 and 12 September in Antwerp. This year, the ITEA PO Days again combined the physical event with online elements, to ensure that participants get the most out of their participation. In the weeks before the PO Days in Antwerp, an online preparation session, 11 online country information sessions and two online project idea pitch sessions (with 65 pitches) were organised.

The online Project idea tool and Partner search enabled participants to already explore a record number of 92 submitted project ideas and get in touch with potential partners. Clustered by ITEA's societal challenges, the submitted project ideas covered most challenges well. Especially the number of Smart Health (24), Smart Industry (24) and Smart Engineering (14) project ideas was very high.

Fully booked event in Antwerp with new elements

A total of 320 participants from 19 countries joined the fully booked PO Days in Antwerp. With 49% returning participants and 51% newcomers, the event confirms that the ITEA Community keeps growing and attracting new members while retaining experienced and satisfied project partners. For new participants, a dedicated 'Newcomers' workshop was organised on 10 September to guide them through the PO Days and processes and to learn from experience project leaders who shared their tips and tricks. In parallel to this workshop, a B2B session took place - another new element this year - enabling participants to schedule one-on-one networking meetings. In addition, participants could visit the 'Highlights of the ITEA impact' project poster exhibition, to get inspired by running and recently finished ITEA projects.

Next to all plenary sessions on 11 and 12 September, there was plenty of time for interaction during the project idea poster session - in which 65 project ideas were presented – and the many lively workgroup sessions. These group discussions resulted in 32 plenary project idea presentations. Also this year, Public Authorities from nine countries attended the event and combined their online Country information session with a poster at the event, informing participants about national priorities, eligibility criteria and funding outlook.

In terms of country participation, The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium were among the top three countries. And in addition to the large Canadian delegation, we were also happy to welcome the large Estonian and South-Korean delegations in Antwerp.

Overall, ITEA PO Days 2024 was very well appreciated by its participants, with a high overall score of 4.2 out of 5.0.

ITEA Awards of Excellence

On 10 September, during the 2024 ITEA Awards of Excellence ceremony, three projects were awarded for their impressive results with great benefits for industry and society: SMART (Award for 'Exceptional Excellence' for outstanding results in all three categories: Innovation, Business impact and Standardisation), Inno4Health (Award for Innovation) and AIToC (Award for Business impact). The ceremony, hosted by ITEA Vice-chairman Régis Cazenave, presented the results of the three award-winning projects and gave insight in what it takes to create an award-winning project. We are very proud of the impressive results that the SMART, Inno4Health and AIToC projects achieved within the ITEA programme. We invite you to learn more about these projects!

Join ITEA Call 2024

If you were not able to participate in the ITEA PO Days 2024, but you are interested in taking part in ITEA Call 2024, you can still check the project ideas in the ITEA Project idea tool which is accessible at the ITEA PO Days 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. Please note that the project idea related information/presentations are only accessible for those with a signed NDA for ITEA Call 2024.

 Deadline for PO submission: 11 November – 17:00 CET

Check the ITEA Call 2024 Calendar