The MINOS-EURONET project has combined novel methods with traditional ones to help organisations from New Member States to gain a higher visibility within European research in Micro Nano Technologies (MNT). Also different approaches to efficient networking have been applied.

The project that will finish in May 2008, had started 3 years ago with the development of knowledge databases, combined with organising workshops and brokerage events and publicising through the website, an Email newsletter and the printed MNT Bulletin. These “standard” networking methods showed some success in bringing Eastern and Western researchers together but outcome in terms of joint projects was still limited.

To increase the visible outcome of these actions, MINOS-EURONET decided in 2007 to combine different actions into a unified database (www.minos-euro.net/databases) that now contains profiles of European specialists, research centres, projects and networks related to the Micro and Nano Technology field, with a special emphasis on profiles from Central and Eastern Europe. The database aims to reveal and promote the research competences from the New Member States (NMS) at European scale and to facilitate the participation of these organisations to EC programmes and other activities in the field of micro-nanosystems. The unified database is also the backbone for online brokerage activities. For the preparation of proposals in EC FP7 this tool has been extensively used in addition to face-to-face brokerage events.

The idea of a roadshow was born as it became clear that while many of the Eastern partners in MINOS know each other very well, and had a clear idea of their capabilities, there was still too little contact with institutions in Western Europe. In fact awareness of the Eastern partners was very low in the West due to the lack of contact with the major research institutes. A key objective of the roadshow was to address this lack of awareness in the West. Many of the major institutes in the West have been accessing EC funding since the inception of the Framework programmes. As a result, there are many academics who are highly networked and experienced in putting togethersuccessful proposals. However, in the East, many institutes have little experience of working on EC proposals, and are therefore at a disadvantage to their more experienced Western colleagues. The roadshow aimed to forge strong partnerships between East and West in order to utilise the Western expertise and improve the chances of Eastern partners successfully receiving EC funding.