Pillar Excellence
Excellent science raises the level of excellence in Europe's science base and ensures a steady stream of world-class research to secure Europe's long-term competitiveness.
The Excellent Science pillar has four specific objectives:
- The European Research Council (ERC) provides attractive and flexible funding to enable talented and creative individual researchers and their teams to pursue the most promising avenues at the frontier of science.
- Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) supports collaborative research in order to extend Europe's capacity for advanced and paradigm-changing innovation. They foster scientific collaboration across disciplines on radically new, high-risk ideas and accelerate development of the most promising emerging areas of science and technology.
- Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) provide excellent and innovative research training as well as attractive career and knowledge-exchange opportunities through cross-border and cross-sector mobility of researchers to best prepare them to face current and future societal challenges.
- Research Infrastructures (including e-infrastructures) (RI) develops European research infrastructure for 2020 and beyond, foster their innovation potential and human capital, and complement this with the related Union policy and international cooperation.
Testimonial
ROOT - Rolling Out OSNMA for the secure synchronization of Telecom networks
The ROOT project obtained funding under Horizon 2020 topic ‘EGNSS applications fostering societal resilience and protecting the environment’. The project, which ran from November 2020 to July 2022, aimed to demonstrate the benefit of Galileo OSNMA signal to increase the robustness of critical telecom infrastructures.
The Flanders-based company Septentrio contributed substantially to completing this objective together with the other ROOT partners. The results of the project partially close a gap in the security of telecommunication networks dependent on satellite-derived time, with indirect benefits in curbing illegal attempts to disrupt network services.
