Coordination and Support Actions

The EU fusion programme is at the forefront of international research on fusion energy. In order to reinforce the expertise of the European fusion research community, the FP7 Euratom Workprogramme 2007 has provisions for three Coordination and Support Actions (CSA) on the following topics:

• Materials Research
• Fusion Data Management
• Educational Affairs

The total budget earmarked for these three CSAs is five million Euros. The aim of this effort is to support and coordinate critical-mass cooperation between research organisations, possibly to bring a range of them active in these areas, together with newcomers on the periphery of the fusion community, to identify and provide access to key facilities or tools and to promote the organisation and management of joint initiatives.

In particular, the CSA on materials research should attract the interest around the following priorities:

• to identify key facilities outside the program
• to provide conditions for mutual access for various research communities to these facilities
• to promote joint collaborative initiatives and the joint funding with other parts of the programme
• to enhance material development by cross field materials activities
• to support the mobility of materials researchers and their access to the fusion facilities

In the CSA on educational matters focus is on the following priorities:

• to support and coordinate the training and education in fusion physics and engineering through the organisation and management of joint initiatives in line with the objectives of the fusion programme including the European fusion doctoral programmes with demonstrated added value.
• to facilitate the mobility of trainees and students and their access to the programme facilities and research activities such as: participation of PhD students to courses organised outside of their home university or to selected training courses and events contributing significantly to the objectives and the cohesion of the programme; work for short periods on existing fusion facilities; organisation of tutorial events for the presentation of fusion to last-year university master students.

In the area of fusion data bases the CSA is likely to support the following sets of activities:

• to facilitate the access of the fusion community to existing data bases for fusion relevant applications
• to identify the needs of the fusion community in the data bases for fusion applications (by listing gaps in existing data bases of critical importance for fusion
• to encourage updating or developing databases in specific parametric domains through production and collection of data (spectroscopy, materials, atomic physics, diagnostics, edge modelling, .)

The three competitive calls for proposals for the funding mechanisms open to the whole EU research community has been issued on the 22 May 2007
on the Cordis website

The deadline for proposal submission ends on 23 October 2007.

Three information workshops were held in order to provide the relevant information about the CSA and to animate the discussion on the priorities for the 3 areas:

• 23 February 2007 on Fusion Data Management in Brussels
• 2 March 2007 on Materials Research in Garching at EFDA Close Support Unit
• 29 March 2007 on Educational Affairs in Brussels

The presentations given at these workshops can be downloaded from this site.


For further information please contact

Dr. Rosa Antidormi
European Commission
DG Research J.4
email: Dr. Rosa Antidormi
http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/energy/fu/fu_en.html