CHANSE, Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe, is a joint initiative of 27 research funding organisations from 24 countries. The CHANSE Programme builds on the experience of two existing networks: HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) and NORFACE (New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe) supporting research in humanities and social sciences respectively. The main goal of the CHANSE inititive is to launch a transnational call for collaborative projects focused on the topic of Transformations: Social and cultural dynamics in the digital age. The objective of this call will be to help understand how digital innovations give rise to social and cultural changes, and are also influenced by society and culture. The joint research call combines the analytic and transformative powers of the humanities and social sciences in understanding processes of change and considering solutions when societies face the introduction of innovations. With a budget of over EUR 36 million, including expected EC co-funding, CHANSE consortium plans to fund excellent research projects conducted by research teams from at least three countries involved in the Programme. CHANSE will strive to produce a lasting effect on the research landscape by cultivating durable research collaboration across multiple national and regional borders, disciplinary boundaries, and stakeholders, thus supporting the sharing of excellence and promoting widening participation in the European Research Area. CHANSE will also strongly support knowledge exchange activities and foster relationships between academia and relevant stakeholders, as well as explore and develop new joint actions. By offering new opportunities for international research cooperation in a critical area of enquiry, the CHANSE Programme will deliver a broad range of academic, societal and economic impacts within, across and beyond the partner countries.

EP PerMed is a new European Partnership dedicated to Personalised Medicine (PM). It supports PM-related R&I, but also facilitates and accelerates all steps so that PM achievements successfully pass through the full value continuum to be implemented in sustainable health systems for the benefit of people and societies. The partnership will foster demonstration projects and promote successes and lessons learned to demonstrate evidence of PM implementation. EP PerMed activities cover overarching aspects, like patient involvement, exchange with medical societies, infrastructures and international and regional collaboration. The project portfolios of EP PerMed and ERA PerMed (ERA-Net co-fund on PM) and others are supported to become successful innovations in healthcare practice. EP PerMed will be the global PM-platform for scientific and strategic dialogue and alignment, resulting in public documents and publications. Accordingly, it will inform the public, patients, healthcare providers or payers about the latest PM options and engage them. The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for Personalised Medicine (SRIA for PM, 2023), developed by EP PerMed partners, is the basis for the partnership's structure and a wide range of its activities. All steps of the SRIA development were strongly support by numerous PM-experts, stakeholders and the European Commission (EC). Thus, the EP PerMed annual Joint Transnational Calls (JTCs) and other funding and activities, events and tools will be in line with the SRIA and outputs will feed into a SRIA update in the coming years. The partnership builds on several developments, initiatives and projects such as ERA PerMed, ICPerMed and its supporting projects (“ICPerMed Family”) funded by the EC. In parallel, it reaches out to the 1+Million Genomes Initiative, other European Partnerships in the Health Cluster and infrastructures like the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).

Water is central to all human activities, to all components of the EU Green Deal and to several UN SDGs. The Water4All Partnership aims at enabling water security for all on the long term through boosting systemic transformations and changes across the entire research – water innovation pipeline, fostering the matchmaking between problem owners and solution providers. It gathers more than 70 partners, R&I funders, environment ministries, local authorities, European, national and regional-scale networks, research performing organisations. It will collaborate with other relevant R&I initiatives. Water4All proposes a portfolio of multi-national, cross-sectoral activities, targeting a variety of actors, intending to generate the following outputs: - Strengthen the water R&I collaboration at European and international levels, across at least 31 countries, notably through Joint Transnational Calls - Coordinate and leverage the activities of the Water R&I community - Support and promote the demonstration and access to market of innovative solutions - Produce, share and better communicate water-related knowledge & data, from local to global scales - Enhance talent development of water R&I professionals - Foster capacity development and life-long training of water policy-makers, stakeholders and civil society - Design & implement approaches for participatory development of innovation Water4All will run its activities across 7 themes of its strategic agenda: water for circular economy; water for ecosystems and biodiversity; sustainable water management; water and health; water infrastructure; international cooperation; water governance. Water4All’s outputs will contribute to: - Deliver sound knowledge, tools and evidence basis on water for policy- & decision-making - Improve consideration of water impacts in all relevant policies - Enhance the field/market use of innovative solutions to water challenges - Increase citizens’ awareness and engagement for an inclusive water

Under Luxembourg's EU presidency in the second half of 2015, the National Research Fund (FNR) is organising a high visibility international conference on the theme of COFUND in the framework of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions. The conference will take place December 10-11, 2015, in the premises of the Chamber of Commerce at Luxembourg-Kirchberg. On the evening of December 10, the Marie Sklodowska Curie Award Ceremony will be organised in the prestigious Cercle Cité in Luxembourg City. The event will be framed by a Keynote followed, and by a Gala dinner. A total of 150-200 participants are foreseen. A call for contributions will invite stakeholders all over Europe to contribute their experiences to the conference, in order to take stock of experiences with the MSCA COFUND so far, and to formulate recommendations for the future of the MSCA COFUND under H2020. A website, a logo and the visual identity of the conference will be developed. Information regarding the conference, the programme, organisational issues, information about speakers, keynotes and MSCA award winners (including a short film per awardee), as well as the final conference report and recommendations will be widely disseminated through the conference dedicated website www.msca2015.lu. The overall budget of the conference is approx. 190.000 EUR. The EU contribution requested amounts to 150.000, while the remaining part is covered by the FNR.