CHIST-ERA

CHIST-ERA is a consortium of research funding organisations in Europe and beyond supporting use-inspired basic research in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) or at the interface between ICT and other domains. The CHIST-ERA consortium is itself supported by Horizon Europe within the European Innovation Council’s Pathfinder programme. CHIST-ERA promotes novel and multidisciplinary research with the potential to lead to significant technology breakthroughs in the long term. The funding organisations jointly support high risk and high impact research projects selected in the framework of CHIST-ERA, in order to reinforce European capabilities in promising new or emerging ICT or ICT related research topics.

CHIST-ERA was launched in 2009 and the first call was published in 2010 (Call 2010). As of Call 2020, CHIST-ERA has selected more than 100 projects under 22 call topics for a funding support of approximately 100 M€. Over the same period, it has received about 12.5 M€ from the European Commission, partly to contribute to this investment and partly to cover the management costs of the network.

CHIST-ERA enables researchers to collaborate internationally through projects of intermediate size with a lean management building on the existing national granting schemes. The typical size of a project is about 0.8 - 1 M€ for 3-5 partners. Projects involving more partners are also common.

CHIST-ERA involves all four types of ERA-NET activities:

1. Information exchange;
2. Definition and preparation of joint activities;
3. Implementation of joint activities;
4. Last but not least, funding of joint transnational research actions.