The Institut Français in Helsinki, the Embassy of France in Finland and the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation have partnered again this year with the Finnish Society for Sciences and Letters and the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters to open the call for proposals of the seed funding program to initiate and strengthen bilateral cooperation in science, innovation and higher education in the fields of interest for both countries.

The application deadline is September 30^th, 2022.

> For more information, please contact uniscience.iff@france.fi

For this purpose, two joint programs are open : 

In order to initiate or strengthen cooperation in science, innovation and higher education on all research topics of mutual interest, this program will allow researchers from France and from Finland (both ways) to visit their counterparts for a short period (from a few days up to 2 weeks). Doctoral students and young researchers are strongly invited to apply! The objectives of such visit are :

• To discuss potential concrete collaboration on research and, if possible, on higher education (mobility of students, dual degrees, joint PhD, EU applications for grants…) ;
• To meet with several researchers within the host institution to explore all possible other collaborations, also in a multidisciplinary approach ;
• To identify short, medium and long term perspectives of collaborations and official cooperation formalization in order to build a sustainable cooperation between research teams, research laboratory, departments and institutions.

The ERI-W is aimed at strengthening identified collaborations between researchers in France and Finland through specific workshops that can take place in Finland or in France on all research topics. The 2022 call will highlight the opportunity for the applicant to organise multilateral (instead of only bilateral) meetings, especially if motivated by the application to Horizon Europe call for funding. In that case, all the parties participating to the workshop should contribute to its implementation. It is recommended to have focused and concrete topics for the workshop that may last 2 to 4 days and involve several researchers (around 15 but not limited). The workshops will have to cover the three pillars of the knowledge triangle :

• Research : initiate, strengthen, foster all research collaborations to move from the researcher-research collaboration to a team-team or lab-lab collaborations ;
• Higher Education : explore, all the possibilities to foster and implement mobility of students, dual degrees, joint PhD …
• Innovation : explore opportunities for technology transfer and innovation and collaboration with the private sector from each country. The participation to the workshop of students, companies, tech transfer offices, innovation councils, officials from the Institutions and from local authorities is encouraged.