The Grant Niels Tudor-Vinther

It is time to finally make a continuation series that follows up on The Timeline Series. The Timeline Series breaks down the proposal preparation process into every single step towards submitting an EU R&D funding proposal. Now, it is time to look at what happens after submission.



Welcome to The Implementation Series where I together with guests will zoom in on all aspects and elements of the process of implementing an EU funded project. And following the same method I start from the beginning: the contract negotiations.



I have allied myself with Georg Melzer-Venturi – old friend of The Grant house – who has done lots of contract negotiations in his career. So, we have a look at the pre-preparations for the negotiations, preparations, the negotiations themselves and then we have a talk about the exchange with the EU Commission and the importance of building a solid trustful collaboration at the earliest stage. This will be a great series!

Episode page



Time codes:

00:01:48 Introduction

00:05:52 When you get the message

00:11:32 GAP pre-preparations

00:32:57 GAP preparations

00:38:17 The negotiations themselves

00:49:42 Post-negotiations

01:02:52 Communication with the Commission

01:09:05 Coordinating the consortium

01:16:33 Learnings, do's and don't's

01:19:17 The toughest challenge

This podcast episode is part of a collaboration between Enspire Science and The Grant.
Whether or not to coordinate a proposal and a project is the question many orginisations ask themselves especially in the beginning of a proposal preparation process.
There are many advantages attached to the role: you are in control of the narrative, you are in contact with all partners, you get the advantage of having the final say and you lift your organisation up into the higher spheres of R&D and innovation area that you are working in.
However, coordinating a proposal and a project is also a very intense work with a cacophony of responsibilities and tasks. Administratively your organisations has to be up to it to lift the work also under pressure. You are the one everybody is looking at, so you have to be ready to not only lead the logistics and processes, but also in relation to the content-related matters you need to follow the work that goes on throughout the full project – not just the ones that you have knowledge about yourself.
Andrea Ratkošová - Horizon Europe Grants Consultant and Project Manager at Enspire Science - has coordinated a large amount of proposal preparations and projects. We teamed up for a talk about what to be aware before talking the decision to coordinate a proposal or a project.

Time codes:
00:02:14 Introduction
00:11:24 To coordinate or not
00:15:02 The coordinator role
00:43:16 Responsibilities
00:58:32 Advantages and challenges
01:13:41 Do's and don't's

One of the key reasons for my motivation to build this podcast was because I could not find any podcasts on EU R&D funding back when I was working as private consultant. The rest is history and you are now listening to the result. However, as I have moved on I indeed have identified other podcast initiatives. And I am strongly supporting them. We need more sound.

Independent grants consultant Ilaria Rudisi, creator of the Italian-languaged podcast Dinamica Europa, and Innovation Hub Manager Tomas Pavlik, creator of the Slovak-languaged podcast Grant Up are running two of the most steady podcasts on EU R&D funding in Europe. To explain what moves us podcasters and hopefully inspire others to get going, I invited them into the virtual podcast studio for a talk about what is driving them forward and giving some advice to others who would like to get started.

It became a nice talk about how a big heart for EU funding and communicating via sound can shape beautiful new universes to move people in the real world.

Time codes:

00:01:54 Introduction

00:09:29 Fly in on available podcasts

00:16:11 Introduction Dinamica Europa and Grant Up podcasts

00:43:10 Podcast strategies

01:07:34 Inspiring others

01:17:18 The toughest challenge

In the last release of Shorts episodes I shared my time working for the Danish offshore renewable sector in Brussels. One of the key players I was supporting was Technical University of Denmark. And what an organisation to support!

This is a research organisation that from around 1980 started to give input to the European Commission on wind energy. When the framework programmes started in the early 1980’s they tapped early into them because the resources that were allocated to them from the Danish government was fairly limited. That formed the basis of the institute’s Brussels approach: 1) building capacities and experience in working with the Brussels eco-system to get their voice heard, 2) developing a more and more professional organisation around their proposal preparation and 3) running EU-projects making it possible for DTU Wind to constantly add more and more resources to their research. All this helped the institute becoming a world-leading research organisation on wind energy. Absolutely brilliant.

I managed to lure one of the European godfathers of wind energy, Chief Consultant and former Deputy Head of Wind Energy Department, Peter Hjuler Jensen, into the virtual podcast studio. We had a great talk about how they managed to build all this up in the early days and then he shares how the research institute professionally work now with the EU R&D funding.

Lots of inspiration for any research organisation on how to organize and approach the EU funding area.

Time codes:

00:02:27 Introduction

00:06:06 Fly in on DTU Wind and Energy Systems

00:14:31 A little bit of history

00:36:17 Two sides of the sword - how did you do it?

00:56:06 Influencing and lobbying

01:15:39 Synergies

01:27:24 Do's and don't's

01:30:06 The toughest challenge

The one thing that has the potential to fundamentally change the area of EU R&D funding for good is the development of Artificial Intelligence. ChatGPT broke through a year and a half ago and the development of this technology and available services – free as well as paid – are going at the speed of light.

In The Grant editor’s office I am of course following this closely. So, I have decided to makes a AI series where I dig into this in more detail. And of course I do this with some of the sharpest professionals on the topic: independent consultant and AI-Chat-guru Kristjan Zemljic and Senior Consultant and very pro-active AI-Chat-user Rita Gil Mata.

In this second episode my two distinguished guests share with us how to practically use the tools in your proposal preparation. This is good. This is VERY good. We take each step of the proposal phase: preparation, idea development, project concept development, partner value chain, proposal writing and, finally, submission. All spiced up with examples. Well….you’re welcome…

Time codes:

00:02:02 Introduction

00:05:49 Preparation for the writing phase

00:22:06 Idea development

00:44:23 Project concept

00:56:14 Partner value chain

01:05:13 Proposal writing

01:30:15 Submission

EARMA is the European Research Managers Association. Over the years it has grown immensely in size and significance. The association gathers the research managers from all over Europe in an effort to share knowledge, best practices and not least raise the recognition of the research manager as role in research organisations.

Since last year’s annual EARMA conference in Prague I have been wanting to get them into the virtual podcast studio. Simply because there are so many of my listeners that are involved in the organisation as members and participants at their events.

So, I managed just in time for this year’s annual conference in Odense, Denmark, to get Managing Director Nik Claesen into the virtual podcast studio for a talk about EARMA, the research manager role and of course a chat about the conference that kicks off tomorrow Tuesday 23 April 2024.

Time codes:

00:01:44 Introduction

00:05:00 EARMA in a nutshell

00:12:07 The research manager role

00:46:06 EARMA Annual Conference

01:08:07 The toughest challenge