Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications

The opportunities for Bulgarian organizations and companies to participate in three competitions under the EU Framework Program for Scientific Research and Innovations “Horizon 2020” were presented at the information day organized by the Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications. The event was held at the premises of the EC Representation in Bulgaria.

The topics that can be applied for and could be of interest to the Bulgarian participants were presented. Competition 2 under the Information and Communication Technology Program is open for applications until 14 April 2015 and the budget for all the participants is 561 million Euros. Application projects in the “EU – Brazil” Competition can be filled in no later than 21 April 2015 and the financing is 7 million Euros for all the participants. The deadline for the “Factories of the Future” Competition is 4 February 2015, with 143 million Euros in the budget.

The participants in Competition 2 can present proposals for improvement of computing systems with low energy consumption, fast Internet focusing on cloud computing and the cloud-based services, industrial robotics with application in the health and transport industries, micro and nano electronics.

Bulgarian scientific organizations and companies are competitive when it comes to the topic of “Content technologies and information management”, said Totka Chernaeva, Head of Unit at MTITC. She pinpointed that the purpose of this topic is to strengthen EU position as a provider of products and services based on digital content and large amounts of. The projects to be financed will be related to overcoming barriers of the multilingual online communication, new technologies for digital content for the purposes of creative and media industries, as well as for e-learning and teaching.

The Competition “Cooperation between the EU and Brazil” will support projects for the establishment of an improved global cyber-infrastructure, while the “Factories of the Future” Competition will finance the development of ICT-based innovative production systems.

The results of the first Bulgarian participation in the ICT program of Horizon 2020 were presented during the information day. The budget for all the participants was 658.5 million Euros as 78 Bulgarian participants applied with 63 projects. Seven participants with 6 projects were selected for financing of 1.9 million Euros.