On September 16^th, the FF4EuroHPC partners (HLRS, CINECA, CESGA, Teratec, scapos and ARCTUR) met at the second digital all-hands meeting to present and discuss the progress with respect to the project’s tasks, specific accomplishments that have been achieved so far as well as planning of the next steps to meet the project objectives. The first project year is completed, as the project started at the beginning of September 2020.

To sum up the main achievements from the first project year:

The first Open Call was opened from November 2^nd, 2020 to January 27^th   and a set of 68 proposals was submitted, with coordinators from 19 countries, involving more than 150 organisations from 25 countries. Through the support of independent expert evaluators, the evaluation of proposals was done and 16 experiments were selected.

The Kick-off Meeting for experiment partners was held from 6th - 7th July. Project partners welcomed all 53 experiment partners from 9 European countries who successfully submitted their proposals in the first Open Call and were selected for funding. The work on experiments started on June 1st and will be running for a maximum of 15 months. 

The second Open Call was opened on 22^nd June 2021 and will be closed on 29^th September 2021.

To support exploitation and business development, the questionnaire for SMEs was developed, provided data was analysed and Key Exploitable Results (KERs) were extracted for each experiment to adapt the support for the partners to develop their business.

All project and Open Calls activities were supported with dissemination and communication activities: project partners successfully presented activities and promoted Open Calls at 49 events, two newsletters were issued, and regular social media activities on Twitter and LinkedIn were carried out. All planned activities were done according to the D5.1 Communication, dissemination and collaboration plan and all KPIs for the first year were achieved.

What awaits us in the next months?

The evaluation process of the experiment proposals will be held in November and December this year, the work on experiments will be started on March 2022, and the Kick-off Meeting for experiment partners will be carried out. Experiment partners will be supported by partners to produce lean canvases to better market the products or services issued from the experiments. Further activities with NCCs and their practical participation to support FF4EuroHPC will be defined. Project activities will be communicated and disseminated via various channels, and project will be presented at relevant events. The first success stories creation (from the first tranche) will be held during the summer months in 2022, and the first booklet will be published in November 2022.