EXPAND II intends to support the implementation of the JPI Urban Europe Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda 2.0 (SRIA 2.0) and advance the R&I programme by (1) supporting JPI Urban Europe’s widening activities towards new countries, stakeholders and partners, (2) facilitating the transition from SRIA 2015 to SRIA 2.0 in terms of enhancing formats, instruments, strategic partnerships, and programme management, and by (3) improving availability and accessibility of research results for cities, funders, policy and decision makers. Since transformations to sustainable and liveable urban futures depend on a broad commitment and co-creation among a diverse set of actors, the identified challenge to be tackled by EXPAND II is widening the community and building capacities in research, policy and society at large. In this sense, the project targets Widening Countries in particular with the aim to establish national dialogues and processes, mobilise national R&I communities dealing with sustainable urban development, intensify strategic relationships of urban stakeholders on transnational level and assess national programmes and instruments for transnational R&I cooperation. The transition arena concept is used as the basic concept for widening participation and capacity building. As the center piece of the transition arena the concept of the JPI Urban Europe Stakeholder Involvement Platform (AGORA) will be applied and advanced. Furthermore, the challenge is tackled by professionalising programme management in JPI Urban Europe in order to make research results more easily accessible for policy and decision makers, provide data and cases to easily follow the progress achieved in JPI Urban Europe and its projects and strengthen the programme as a hub for international cooperation. All these activities are tuned to further expand the programme towards Widening Countries and other interested parties, offer information and platforms to engage for researchers, urban pu

CHANSE, Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe, is a joint initiative of 27 research funding organisations from 24 countries. The CHANSE Programme builds on the experience of two existing networks: HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) and NORFACE (New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe) supporting research in humanities and social sciences respectively. The main goal of the CHANSE inititive is to launch a transnational call for collaborative projects focused on the topic of Transformations: Social and cultural dynamics in the digital age. The objective of this call will be to help understand how digital innovations give rise to social and cultural changes, and are also influenced by society and culture. The joint research call combines the analytic and transformative powers of the humanities and social sciences in understanding processes of change and considering solutions when societies face the introduction of innovations. With a budget of over EUR 36 million, including expected EC co-funding, CHANSE consortium plans to fund excellent research projects conducted by research teams from at least three countries involved in the Programme. CHANSE will strive to produce a lasting effect on the research landscape by cultivating durable research collaboration across multiple national and regional borders, disciplinary boundaries, and stakeholders, thus supporting the sharing of excellence and promoting widening participation in the European Research Area. CHANSE will also strongly support knowledge exchange activities and foster relationships between academia and relevant stakeholders, as well as explore and develop new joint actions. By offering new opportunities for international research cooperation in a critical area of enquiry, the CHANSE Programme will deliver a broad range of academic, societal and economic impacts within, across and beyond the partner countries.

EP PerMed is a new European Partnership dedicated to Personalised Medicine (PM). It supports PM-related R&I, but also facilitates and accelerates all steps so that PM achievements successfully pass through the full value continuum to be implemented in sustainable health systems for the benefit of people and societies. The partnership will foster demonstration projects and promote successes and lessons learned to demonstrate evidence of PM implementation. EP PerMed activities cover overarching aspects, like patient involvement, exchange with medical societies, infrastructures and international and regional collaboration. The project portfolios of EP PerMed and ERA PerMed (ERA-Net co-fund on PM) and others are supported to become successful innovations in healthcare practice. EP PerMed will be the global PM-platform for scientific and strategic dialogue and alignment, resulting in public documents and publications. Accordingly, it will inform the public, patients, healthcare providers or payers about the latest PM options and engage them. The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for Personalised Medicine (SRIA for PM, 2023), developed by EP PerMed partners, is the basis for the partnership's structure and a wide range of its activities. All steps of the SRIA development were strongly support by numerous PM-experts, stakeholders and the European Commission (EC). Thus, the EP PerMed annual Joint Transnational Calls (JTCs) and other funding and activities, events and tools will be in line with the SRIA and outputs will feed into a SRIA update in the coming years. The partnership builds on several developments, initiatives and projects such as ERA PerMed, ICPerMed and its supporting projects (“ICPerMed Family”) funded by the EC. In parallel, it reaches out to the 1+Million Genomes Initiative, other European Partnerships in the Health Cluster and infrastructures like the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).

Water is central to all human activities, to all components of the EU Green Deal and to several UN SDGs. The Water4All Partnership aims at enabling water security for all on the long term through boosting systemic transformations and changes across the entire research – water innovation pipeline, fostering the matchmaking between problem owners and solution providers. It gathers more than 70 partners, R&I funders, environment ministries, local authorities, European, national and regional-scale networks, research performing organisations. It will collaborate with other relevant R&I initiatives. Water4All proposes a portfolio of multi-national, cross-sectoral activities, targeting a variety of actors, intending to generate the following outputs: - Strengthen the water R&I collaboration at European and international levels, across at least 31 countries, notably through Joint Transnational Calls - Coordinate and leverage the activities of the Water R&I community - Support and promote the demonstration and access to market of innovative solutions - Produce, share and better communicate water-related knowledge & data, from local to global scales - Enhance talent development of water R&I professionals - Foster capacity development and life-long training of water policy-makers, stakeholders and civil society - Design & implement approaches for participatory development of innovation Water4All will run its activities across 7 themes of its strategic agenda: water for circular economy; water for ecosystems and biodiversity; sustainable water management; water and health; water infrastructure; international cooperation; water governance. Water4All’s outputs will contribute to: - Deliver sound knowledge, tools and evidence basis on water for policy- & decision-making - Improve consideration of water impacts in all relevant policies - Enhance the field/market use of innovative solutions to water challenges - Increase citizens’ awareness and engagement for an inclusive water

Many of the European and world's ecosystems undergo degradation of terrestrial, aquatic and transitional ecosystems with nMany of the European and world's ecosystems undergo degradation of terrestrial, aquatic and transitional ecosystems with negative impacts on biological diversity and people’s livelihoods. In this context, research actions are needed to ensure the protection and/or restoration of ecosystems and their biodiversity whilst meeting the socio-economic, political and cultural needs of current and future generations. By networking 34 funding agencies from 27 countries from Europe & other continents, BiodivRestore aims to promote coordinated international research on conservation and restoration of degraded ecosystems and their biodiversity, in all environments, including a focus on aquatic systems. It will strengthen research & research programmes coordination to support science-based evidence for the implementation of a relatively wide range of European and International policy initiatives and therefore act for better management, conservation and restoration of ecosystems and their biodiversity. This will notably be achieved by launching one call for proposals co-funded by the European Commission, as well as a knowledge hub to support the implementation of nature restoration policies, promoting research collaboration across national borders & disciplines and supporting dialogue & collaboration between academia & stakeholders, and stakeholder engagement in research in order to increase the impact of research on policy & practice. BiodivRestore will also contribute to networking, clustering and capacity building activities for the research community in the field and enhanced synergy coordination between RDI funding programmes (national, EU, International) in the relevant research fields. Lastly, BiodivRestore will contribute to reinforce the links between BiodivERsA and the WATER JPI, to enhance their collaboration for issues at the crossroad of water resources, aquatic ecosystems and biodiversity sustainable management.