Ljubljana, 14 June 2019 – Government Office for Development and European Cohesion Policy, the Managing Authority for ERDF, ESF and Cohesion Fund, has issued a grant decision for three research infrastructures projects aimed at fostering international competitiveness of Slovene RDI sphere. The projects will be implemented in both cohesion regions and are set to receive ERDF contribution totalling EUR 2.9 million. The investments will facilitate, speed up and optimize the involvement of stakeholders in major international projects and will help enhance the innovation potential of research infrastructures and their human resources while supporting the free movement of people, ideas and knowledge within the European research area.
The underlying goal of the project ‘’Development of research infrastructures for international competitiveness of Slovene RDI sphere – RI-SI-CERIC’’ is to set up dedicated premises to accommodate research activities and purchase high-tech research equipment, thus providing the basic conditions for development of new technologies and promotion of closer collaboration between the research sphere and knowledge users. The project further aims to step up the transfer of knowledge from the academic sphere to the public, profit and non-profit sectors while fostering interdisciplinary research. The project seeks to strengthen the role of the main national research partner institutions in individual infrastructure projects classified as ‘’implemented projects’’. The latter are linked both to priority areas identified in the Research Infrastructure Development Plan and Slovenian Smart Specialisation Strategy (S4), which largely contributes to making headway towards the goals set in the Resolution on Research and Innovation Strategy of Slovenia 2011-2020. The Resolution promotes participation in international research infrastructure projects. The project budget amounts to EUR 3.1 million, of which EUR 2.5 million or 80% comes from ERDF.
The project ‘’Development of research infrastructures for international competitiveness of Slovene RDI sphere – RI-SI-CLARIN’’ aims to promote research activities, primarily in the humanities and social sciences through the purchase and installation of research equipment to cater to the needs of CLARIN.SI consortium. The underlying goal of the project is to ensure further operation of the CLARIN.SI language resource repository and existing online services as well as to upgrade these systems with research equipment enabling research, development and implementation of cutting-edge methods and solutions for natural language processing and analysing of Slovene language so as to make them continuously available for use by the Slovene research community united under the CLARIN.SI consortium and, in accordance with the principles of open access, the wider Slovene and international research community. Total project budget amounts to EUR 466,000, of which EUR 373,000 or 80% comes from ERDF.
The project ‘’Development of research infrastructures for international competitiveness of Slovene RDI sphere RI-SI-DARIAH’’ supports the purchase and installation of research equipment for the Slovene branch of the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities or DARIAH-SI. The project includes the purchase of servers, network switches, server cabinets, disk arrays, uninterruptible power supply as well as the deployment and installation of the equipment. These measures will help update the existing equipment, allowing DARIAH-SI to join and participate on an equal footing in SLING – Slovenian national supercomputing network for the purpose of implementing digital humanities projects and facilitating integration of the projects in the European research area. Total project budget stands at EUR 98,000, of which EUR 78,000 or 80% comes from ERDF for cohesion region Zahodna Slovenija.
For more information, please refer to the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport