Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Materials Networking (Enhancing the scientific capacity of the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy at Sofia University as leading regional research and innovation centre in the area of advanced functional materials)

Teaser

The main objective of the TWINNING project Materials Networking is enhancement of the scientific and technological capacity of the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy at Sofia University (FCP-SU) and raising the research profile of the Faculty and its staff in the field of...

Summary

The main objective of the TWINNING project Materials Networking is enhancement of the scientific and technological capacity of the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy at Sofia University (FCP-SU) and raising the research profile of the Faculty and its staff in the field of advanced functional materials. This has to be attained via networking with three World-wide leading institutions – Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, Max-Plank Institute of Polymer Research and Faculty of Chemistry, University of Barcelona.
Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy at SU is a leading research centre in functional materials in Bulgaria and its networking and collaboration with global leaders in this research field will help in developing its potential to become European-wide known centre with increasing research and innovation contributions and achievements. Such achievements will increase the participation of the teams from FCP-SU in European and international projects and will also promote the higher performance of other research institutions in Bulgaria.
The partners from research intensive institutions have high international reputation and expertise in the various aspects of synthesis, modification, characterisation, testing and modelling of functional materials. Moreover, these world leading partners have complementary competences ranging from various fields of Chemistry to broad area of Materials Science. Based on the expertise and achievements of the research groups in FCP-SU, the project will contribute to two out of four of the priority areas of the Bulgaria’s Smart Specialization Strategy with relevant thematic priorities “Materials for clean energy and environment protection” and “Materials with pharmaceutical and medical applications”.

Work performed

The Materials Networking main activities realized during the 1st reporting period are:
Activities that allowed for enhanced and intensive research cooperation between the project partner institutions
These activities aimed at establishing networking opportunities for the Faculty’s researchers to discuss new collaborations and joint research activities with their colleagues from the three other partner organizations.
- Scientific events organized within the project - these include two workshops on Advanced Materials organized at month 2 and month 13 as well as the 1st summer school of the project, organized at University of Cambridge (month 11).
- Exchange of researchers to enhance the competences as well as to enhance the research cooperation. These activities included 13 short term on-site trainings of the Faculty researchers to partnering organizations as well as short term staff exchange. The latter being: 6 outgoing, realized by experienced researchers form the Faculty to the partnering organizations, and 3 incoming, i.e. experienced scientists from the partnering organizations came to the Faculty.
The results from these activities are joint papers as well as joint research proposals submitted to different funding organizations, including H2020.
Activities that allowed for strengthening the Faculty’s leading position as a European-wide known research centre in functional materials and increasing the research production and scientific impact of the FCP-SU
Besides the closer cooperation with the three world leading partnering organizations, the other activities aiming to further strengthen the leading role of FCP-SU in the field of functional materials included enhanced dissemination of the generated within the Faculty scientific knowledge through the financial support for the Faculty’s researchers to participate at 40 conferences and other events, through which the visibility of the Faculty’s research was increased. The activities aiming to stimulate the publications of the Faculty’s researchers into journals with higher impact factor will be implemented in the second reporting period.
Activities that aimed at increasing the attractiveness of the Faculty for researchers and students from around the World including also the Bulgarian research diaspora World-wide
The project also allowed for keeping and enhancing the relation and cooperation between the researchers from the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy and Bulgarian scientists working abroad.
Activities that allowed for generating synergies between the Materials Networking project and other projects for research, innovation and competitiveness
The Materials Networking project is a tool to boost the Faculty’s researchers’ activities in the field of advanced functional materials. In particular, during the reporting period the number of research proposals in the field of Advanced Functional Materials submitted to H2020 and participation in COST actions, as well as proposals to the Operational Programme Science and Education for Smart Growth, Bulgaria and to the Bulgarian Science Fund, increased notably. Thus, the Materials Networking project is really enhancing the competitiveness of the Faculty in the field of Advanced Functional Materials and in this way it generates synergies with other European and national programs.
The Materials Networking project correspond to two out of four thematic priorities of the Bulgarian Smart Specialization Strategy (RIS3-BG), namely “Mechatronics and clean technologies” and “Industry for a healthy life and bio-technology”. These are the two thematic priorities where all applications of the Faculty for the Bulgarian operational programmes were submitted – participation in proposals for 3 Centres of Excellence and 3 Centres of Competence. Thus, the consolidation of the Faculty researchers through the activities of the MN project significantly enhanced the Faculty’s presence at national level in the Bulg

Final results

The Materials Networking activities were successful so far because most of the planned achievements (KPI) were successfully reached and some of them even surpassed.
The joint papers with researchers from partnering organizations and joint proposal submissions are in line with the planned numbers. The project activities provoked an increase in the quality of the research publications of the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy as for the 1st year of the project, even the values planned for the period after the project end for average IF of the published papers was surpassed.
Thus, the Materials Networking project activities resulted into significantly enhanced quality of the research publications of the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy, increased visibility of the Faculty at international level, strengthened research cooperation with the partner institutions, and increased project activity of the Faculty researchers in the field of the project.
The main result, expected until the end of the project, is to continue further with these achievements and to fully accomplish the project goals.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.materialsnetworking.eu.