{"id":313,"date":"2018-06-07T16:17:29","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T16:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizon.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=313"},"modified":"2018-06-07T16:17:29","modified_gmt":"2018-06-07T16:17:29","slug":"horizon-europe-will-connect-the-public-to-european-science-carlos-moedas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/313\/horizon-europe-will-connect-the-public-to-european-science-carlos-moedas\/","title":{"rendered":"Horizon Europe will connect the public to European science \u2013 Carlos Moedas"},"content":{"rendered":"

The next European science and research funding programme, known as Horizon Europe, is designed to connect people with the achievements financed by their tax money, and to fix problems with innovation funding, according to Carlos Moedas, the European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation. He spoke to Horizon magazine to coincide with the launch of the Horizon Europe proposals on 7 June.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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The plans for Horizon Europe contain a lot of continuity with Horizon 2020 but also some new elements such as the establishment of a European Innovation Council to promote innovation and the introduction of mission-oriented research. What\u2019s your overall goal?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018The idea was that we wanted to change the things that we are not doing very well but we would really like to have continuity in the things that we are doing well. We are the best in the world in fundamental research. So what we do in fundamental research is extremely good and we should keep doing it and increasing it.<\/p>\n

\u2018What changes is basically two things. (The first is) the way we fund innovation. That is something that we don\u2019t do very well so far, and we have proof of that. We have talked to entrepreneurs and we have people who came to us and told us: \u201cLook, the way you look at innovation is too top down. You tell us what to do and today innovation is not about that, it is about us telling you what we want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018And so the Innovation Council is to look at innovation the other way around – bottom up. We will be close to (the entrepreneurs), we will mentor them, we\u2019ll be more than the money, we\u2019ll be about following up what they do, about giving them data that they need.<\/p>\n

\u2018And then there\u2019s this idea of linking what we do to people. The idea of the missions, which comes from the work of the economist\u00a0Mariana Mazzucato<\/a>, is exactly to create ways of communicating better to the people what we do (in European science and research). Instead of saying that we will map the brain, we can say that our mission is to cure some diseases like Alzheimer\u2019s or dementia, or that we\u2019ll do something for people not to die of cancer, and people will understand better what we do.\u2019<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the benefit of arranging research funding around missions?<\/strong><\/p>\n