EIT Health and EIT Raw Materials to boost EU innovation

The EIT has announced the winners of the 2014 call for two new KICs. EIT Health and EIT Raw Materials will integrate European partnerships of higher education, business and research aiming to tackle societal challenges across Europe.

Leading the two KICs are the pan-European consortia ‘InnoLife’ and ‘RawMatTERS’. The KICs will receive a start-up grant of €4m from the EIT, itself funded by Horizon 2020. ‘EIT Health’ and ‘EIT Raw Materials’ and are expected to become fully operational after the signature of a seven-year Framework Partnership Agreement between the consortium and the EIT next year.

Speaking about the new KICs, Martin Kern, EIT interim director, said: “The outstanding factor behind the decision was the potential of the winners to create innovations needed to address critical challenges for today’s societies. EIT Health and EIT Raw Materials are excellent partnerships that will generate impact, in terms of growth and job creation, which are at the heart of the Europe 2020 strategy and President Jean-Claude Juncker’s Commission top priorities.”

InnoLife, which will run EIT Health, is a consortium of more than 140 partners of leading businesses, research centres and universities from 14 EU countries, including Abbott Laboratories from Spain, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, and the University of Oxford in the UK.

RawMatTERS, winner of EIT Raw Materials call, brings together more than 100 partners from 20 EU member states, including the KGHM Polish Copper S.A. from Poland, the RISE Research Institute of Sweden and the University of Milano-Bicocca from Italy.

Adding his thoughts, Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport and who is responsible for the EIT, said: “Ageing societies and our dependence on raw materials pose serious challenges to the EU. Science and innovation have a crucial part to play in tackling them. I am therefore very pleased to see the EIT getting these two strategic partnerships underway.”

The EIT will launch the next call for KIC proposals in 2016 for ‘Food4Future – sustainable supply chain from resources to consumers’ and ‘Added-value Manufacturing’, with a further call tentatively planned for 2018 addressing ‘Urban Mobility’.