Content and timeline

Within the 2025 Research Infrastructure Work Programme of Horizon Europe, the European Commission is expected to launch soon a call for proposals aimed at the “Implementation of Research Infrastructure Technology Roadmaps” (HORIZON-INFRA-2025-01-TECH-02). The foreseen submission deadline is 18 September 2025, while the exact funding for this call has still to be announced. Duration of the new project will be 4 years (indicatively, 06/2026-06/2030).

Scope of the call as defined by the EC is to support projects aimed at joint development of technologies for maintaining or upgrading the European Research Infrastructures, through the implementation of significant parts of existing technology roadmaps in co-creation with industry. Since particle accelerators have been identified as a technology field with already developed advanced roadmaps (ESPP, LEAPS, etc.), the particle accelerator community has started preparation of a high-quality proposal, in the line of the previous CARE-EuCARD-EuCARD2-ARIES-I.FAST projects. In the call, this new proposal will compete with similar initiatives coming from other Research Infrastructure technologies.

As for all general accelerator R&D projects, the preparation of this proposal is coordinated by the TIARA Collaboration Council (Test Infrastructure and Accelerator Research Area). In its October 2024 meeting, TIARA has approved for the new project a structure based on four pillars (groups of Work Packages):

1. Instruments: general topics supporting particle accelerator research and development, as training, communication, outreach, relations with industry, technology transfer, societal applications, exploratory work, roadmap follow-up and integration, etc.

2. Enabling Technologies: few key technologies identified by TIARA in collaboration with representatives of the accelerator user communities, corresponding to outstanding priorities of the accelerator roadmaps. These technologies have the potential for a strong impact on future accelerators, in several cases as a continuation of previous work in ARIES or I.FAST.

3. Emerging Technologies: technologies at a less advanced stage of development, to be selected after an internal call for proposals. An evaluation committee set-up by TIARA will rank the proposals according to well-defined and publicly available evaluation rules.

4. Innovation Fund: some budget will be reserved for a second internal call for innovative proposals, in the line of what done in I.FAST.

The timeline for project preparation is as follow:

• January 2025: definition of Enabling Technologies in a TIARA meeting enlarged to representatives of the accelerator user communities.

• February 2025: invitation to selected communities for presenting preliminary proposals for Enabling Technology Work Packages.

• 6 March 2025: TIARA meeting for feedback on Enabling Technologies and approval of evaluation criteria and submission form for Emerging Technologies internal call.

• 17 March 2025: information on the internal Emerging Technologies call sent to all participants to previous projects and advertised on web site and other channels.

• 30 April 2025: deadline for internal submission of proposals to the Emerging technologies call.

• 30 May 2025: selection of Emerging Technologies completed.

• 1 June – 18 September 2025: Preparation of proposal document.
  

Submission of proposals for Emerging Technologies

Proposals for the internal Emerging Technologies call must be made using the Proposal Submission Form available on this web site. The form has to be sent to the mail address accelerator.infratech02@cern.ch before 30 April, 2025.

Proposals for Emerging Technologies will consists of collaborations with a minimum of two partners from two different EU or associate countries, presenting a programme for increasing the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of a specific particle-accelerator related technology, possibly with some industry involvement. The proposals may request a financial support (EC contribution) between 200 k€ and 400 k€ (up to 500 k€ in special justified cases). An additional contribution (financial, in-kind or personnel) from the partners (“matching funds”) is required, at the level of 50% of the EC contribution for research partners and 25% for industrial partners.

The submission form contains an introductory part presenting the general guidelines for the call as defined by the EC, the additional conditions requested by TIARA, and some indications on how to build the budget for the emerging technologies proposals.

The descriptive part of the submission form (maximum 7 pages) will provide the information needed for the evaluation of proposals. Please respect the instructions on the maximum number of characters (including spaces) for each section.

Please address comments and requests for information to accelerator.infratech02@cern.ch

Evaluation criteria

TIARA has defined the following list of evaluation criteria, with the related score. An Evaluation Guide will be prepared, explaining how the scores for the different criteria are defined, and made available in April on this web site.

	Criterion	Points
1	Scientific and technological excellence, innovation content	10
2	Coherence with the roadmaps of accelerator communities and continuity with previous EC projects	5
3	Impact on Research Infrastructures, their users and/or society	5
4	Methodology and planning	5
5	Transnationality and integration of partners	5
6	Capacity to attract additional matching funds	5
7	Correspondence between cost and objectives	5
8	Extent and quality of industry involvement	5
9	Improve use of resources and reduce environmental impact	5
	TOTAL	50

The criteria above correspond to the general requirements for activities to be part of this proposal, as defined in the EC call:

1. implement significant parts of a research infrastructure technology roadmap (ESPP, LEAPS, others) or develop new advanced applications.

2. address prototyping of high-performance systems needed to upgrade the involved research infrastructures or construct their next generation.

3. Include co-creation with industrial partners from the earliest possible stage (as beneficiaries, subcontractors, or with letters of engagement). Please, note that in this call Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) subcontracting is specially encouraged, since PCP can help sharing risks and promote co-creation.  

4. respond to the needs of several research infrastructures, possibly of different types.

5. possibly build on results from previous projects and avoid overlaps with ongoing projects.

6. consider resource efficiency (e.g. raw material and energy consumption) and environmental (including climate-related) impacts.