Dear Colleagues:
we are constantly receiving requests from researchers who were
involved with the STEP initiative and would like to know from us if
there is any forming consortium in their domain of interest.

As you should know by now the STEP action is formally finished, and
each single research group is pursuing funding opportunities
independently, also considering this are typically competitive
exercises.

However, there are two factors related to EC funding for VPH that
make this also a collective exercise. The first is that EC-funded
projects are usually submitted by consortia of European institutions,
rather than a by a single scientist. Thus, the formation of these
consortia is somehow a collective process.

Secondly, the call for proposals on the Virtual Physiological Human
that should be published soon, and of which we already extensively
debated on this forum, is a key opportunity for the future of
Integrative Research in Europe. If we collectively manage to submit
very good proposals, that translate into very good projects that
deliver most of what they promised, producing in the next few years
solid evidences that the VPH will be a success story, there are very
good chances that Integrative Research and multiscale modelling will
become a mainstream topic in biomedical research, with sustained
funding for the years to come. On the contrary, if we as a community
fail this appointment, there are good chances that this will be a
one-off funding opportunity.

So, even if setting up consortia and writing funding proposals is a
private exercise, there are some implications in it that have a
public community dimension. Because of this we decided to provide a
tool for researchers willing to be involved into consortia and for
tentative consortia to call for certain skills. Such a tool already
exist on Cordis, but it covers the entire FP7 and so we cannot say it
is well focused. here we shall have only wants and offers pertinent
to the VPH.

To the purpose we suggest single researchers and tentative consortia
to use the WANTS/OFFERS boards available at the VPH Square:
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/VPHboard/

At the same link you will find the instructions on how to post a want
or and offer add. In addition to these generic instructions, I would
suggest you add in the document title FP7-Call2: followed by a the
type expertise you are searching or offering. As an example I
created an offer for our skills in a tentative consortium interested
to applications to orthopaedics. you will see it here:
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/VPHboard/Offer/tjr

The researchers offering skills should post under OFFER, while the
consortia wanting certain skills should post under WANT.

Cheers


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MARCO VICECONTI, PhD (viceconti@tecno.ior.it)
Laboratorio di Tecnologia Medica tel. 39-051-6366865
Istituti Ortopedici Rizzoli fax. 39-051-6366863
via di barbiano 1/10, 40136 - Bologna, Italy

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright in the forest of the night,
what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?
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Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer