22/12/2005 - IST Call 6 Now Open:

After a slight delay of two days from the planed launch, IST Call 6 is now open. The closing date remains Tuesday 25th April 2006.

The Topics covered in this Call are:

• 2.6.1 Advanced Robotics
• 2.6.2 Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) in the Ageing Society
• 2.6.3 Search engines for audio-visual content
• 2.6.4 Accompanying actions in support of participation in Community ICT research
• 2.6.5 International Co-operation

Please note that there are no openings for NoEs in this Call.

There are some minor changes in the Guides for proposers and other material available.

The Guides now say explicitly that the online preparation method is recommended in preference to offline preparation with the EPTool. They also add that Croatia is anticipated to become an Associated Candidate Country in early 2006. But the main changes in the Guides since last time are extensions to the instructions for writing proposal Part B for STREPs, CAs and SSAs; this is to accommodate the new descriptive bullet points which have been introduced to the evaluation criteria for those instruments in Strategic objectives 2.6.5/1 and 2.6.5/2.

A couple of extra points have been added to the FAQs; explaining the procedure for the Acknowledgement of receipt and warning proposers of the dangers of waiting till the last minute to submit their proposal. Specifically it reminds proposers using online submission that if the deadline passes while they are still uploading their proposal, they have failed to submit.

Timetable for IST Call 6