Pillar Excellence

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

image of Miricle - Mine Risk Clearance for Europe

Miricle - Mine Risk Clearance for Europe

The Miricle project, ‘Mine Risk Clearance for Europe’, obtained funding under the European Defence Industrial Development programme call ‘Underwater control contributing to resilience at sea’. The main objective of the project was to achieve a European and sovereign capacity in future mine warfare and create a path for the next generation ‘made in Europe’ countermeasure solutions. In order to realise this objective, Miricle addressed various stages: studies, design, prototyping and testing. These stages inter alia included the successful testing of an XL Unmanned Underwater Vehicle, a protototyped mine disposal system and multiple innovative systems to detect buried mines. Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), was one of the five Belgian partners in the consortium. Within the project, VLIZ was able to forward its research on the acoustic imaging of the seabed to spatially map and visualize buried structures and objects - in this case buried mines - in the highest possible detail. VLIZ also led the work on ‘Port and Offshore Testing’, building on the expertise of the institute in the field of marine operations and technology.