The course reviews the most critical aspects of preparing a grant application in the most relevant European programmes in order to support students to manage a successful preparation and submission process. The course teaches students how to set the overall project objectives and structure the application in line with the evaluation criteria, and how to plan accordingly tasks and activities with expected milestones, deliverables and outputs.

Course Objectives 

The course was designed for the following course objectives:

The course reviews the most critical aspects of preparing a grant application in the most relevant European programmes in order to support students to manage a successful preparation and submission process. The course teaches students how to set the overall project objectives and structure the application in line with requirement, and how to plan accordingly tasks and activities with expected milestones, deliverables and outputs. Project design tools and practical advices are incorporated in the course to enable students to prepare excellent grant applications, such as tools for preparing a project implementation plan.

  • Participants are getting acquainted with the most important evaluation criteria in different EU R&D programmes, study how to break down their initial concepts to usable project activities, and get more practical first-hand advice (e.g. use of “EU jargon” in formulating text).
  • Participants gain a deeper knowledge of relevant project design, such as GANTT charts, Perth graphs, Logical Framework Approach, project life cycle tools, etc.
  • Participants learn the most critical components of drawing up a successful application to different EU R&D programmes, such as setting the overall objectives, key activities and related deliverables, outputs, outcomes and milestones, as well as dissemination and exploitation activities.
  • Participants are familiarized with the electronic submission portals and the related administrative/financial forms and requirements.
  • Participants gain an overview on the impact part of Horizon 2020 proposals (in particular Research and Innovation Actions), but also highlight differences to other project types.
  • Participants gain insights on different impact dimensions.
  • Participants can identify target groups and stakeholders and how they influence the impacts of research and innovation activities.
  • Participants learn how communication, dissemination and exploitation or capitalization is interlinked in ReSTI projects.
  • Participants access concepts and tools to gain impact through their communication and dissemination strategy and activities in their ReSTI projects. 
  • Participants become acquainted with the terminology and definitions and access Open Science.
  • Participants are approaching Open Access, Open Research Data, Open Methods as part of a bigger Open Movement and Open Culture. Education, Open Evaluation and Citizen Science from perspectives of benefits and challenges.
  • Participants learn more about compliance with EU Open Science policies.

Learning Outcomes

In line with the Course Objectives listed in Section 4, by the end of the course, users should be able to: 

  • Participants are able to turn their research idea into a project outline with the biggest chance for success on the basis of evaluation criteria.
  • Participants are able to prepare an adequate project implementation plan where activities, milestones and outcomes are aligned and all respect the programme requirements.
  • Participants are able to fully prepare an application for EU funding across a variety of funding programmes with a deeper understanding of the functions of each part in the application.
  • Participants are able to submit a prepared application in a proper way in the most important European funding programmes (e.g. H2020, Interreg), with an understanding of differences between these programmes.
  • Participants know about the differences in the impact framework for different parts of Horizon 2020, in different disciplines, different project types and in different other programmes related to Horizon 2020.
  • Participants can apply methods of stakeholder analysis and apply these to maximize potential impacts.
  • Participants can translate the impact-driven approach into work packages and deliverables.
  • Participants enhance perspectives through comparison of results of others
  • Participants can develop a communication and dissemination strategy including a set of indicators to measure the communication and dissemination of their ReSTI projects (main focus on Horizon 2020 or Interreg Danube Transnational Programme).
  • Participants can act according to the vision of Open Science in the European Union’s STI strategy.
  • Participants can implement own research activities along mandatory Open Access policies and the Open Data Pilot in Horizon 2020.


Last modified: Monday, 26 August 2019, 12:45 PM