Three events organized by the INCITE project www.inciteproject.org were held in Bangalore, Pune and Mumbai at the end of February and beginning of March to encourage Indian participation in the IST programme within FP6.

The events had the objective to spread among the Indian IT constituency basic knowledge and orientation about funding opportunities available for research activities in the last phase of the FP6 and to provide some insight about the FP7. A special contribution was made by a couple of Indian organisations namely Tata Consultancy Services and C-DAC Mumbai, who shared their success stories relevant to their participation in the IST programme. Dr. Indraneel Ghose who is the Science and Technology Advisor to the European Commission Delegation in India took the participants through an informative presentation on the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 2007-2013) and Indian participation in the programme.

In its first round of events, the INCITE project managed to gather more than 100 organisations from Bangalore, Pune & Mumbai and provide specific orientation to 55 of them. Events were articulated in a half-day of general introduction to European funding to IT research and then organized into short modules of 45 minutes each, during which the registered organisations interacted with the EU research funding specialists and put forth their R&D project ideas.

The next round of INCITE events:

The third round is scheduled in January 2007 in Kolkata, New Delhi and Bangalore. More details will be available on the INCITE web-site at http://www.inciteproject.org

If yes, do write to Surbhi Sharma at surbhi@itsmaindia.org or Giuseppe Saija at saija@teseo.be and it will be our pleasure to hold these 1-2-1 consultations in your city. Presently, we are holding these events in selected cities but we definitely look forward to hold similar events in other cities on demand. INCITE aims to create awareness across India about the IST programme and eligibility of Indian organisations to participate in the programme.

Monsoon at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur showcases concrete opportunities for Indians in EU funded ICT research and innovation projects.

The one day workshop on 2 February 2006, titled "Opportunities for Indian partners in FP6", drew more than seventy participants from academia, research and industry to learn firsthand how EU programmes, priorities and policies in ICT research are formulated, how projects are conceived, evaluated, funded and implemented. Indian participants are now better equipped to leverage their expertise and enhance the spectrum of collaborative research with EU players.

The Monsoon project consortium has plans to organise several other thematic as well as dissemination/mobilisation workshops targeting ICT hubs in India to bring more and more Indian players into the sphere of EU-funded research projects.

Please register at www.euroindia-it.org to find out more about EU-India Cooperation in ICT research and EU funding.

A Specific call to promote the participation of partners from Targeted Third Countries in projects for which contracts are already signed or under negotiation in priority thematic areas of research.

This call aims at selecting research entities in the targeted third countries (to participate in ongoing / under negotiation projects-contracts). In order to promote the participation of partners from Targeted Third Countries (TTC) in the FP 6 priorities and to support and develop more efficient means of cooperation between EU Member States, Associated Countries, Associated Candidate Countries and these countries, a specifically dedicated call for proposals is published.