EPFL successfully concludes its Leading House activities
© CODEV 2017 / Women at Agra Fort, Unesco World Heritage site, India
Switzerland expanded its cooperation in education, research and innovation with India and Brazil during the last 12 years.
For the past 12 years EPFL has been commissioned by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) as Leading House to develop and coordinate joint research cooperation programmes with India and Brazil with a view to expanding Swiss international cooperation through the establishment of new strategic partnerships. EPFL also led exploratory activities with additional Latin American countries as well as with Vietnam. Now that EPFL has concluded its activities as Leading House, we feel that this is the ideal moment to review the work that was undertaken, and to highlight the major achievements.
Activities during the first phases, which focussed on India and Brazil
With India, joint cutting-edge research was supported by the Indo-Swiss Joint Research Programme after it was established in 2005. EPFL set the strategic orientation of the programme and managed pilot-funding instruments in collaboration with the University of Lausanne (UNIL), as Associated Leading House since then. In the case of Brazil, EPFL led scientific cooperation activities, first during a pilot stage from 2008 to 2011, and then within the framework of the Brazilian-Swiss Joint Research Programme since 2012. Funding instruments were implemented to encourage joint research projects, researcher exchanges, and academia-industry linkages that brought scientists from Switzerland and Brazil together.
Other Latin American countries were identified as potential additional partners during the 2008-2012 phase. With Chile, the pilot phase of the Chilean-Swiss Joint Research Programme fostered collaboration in energy, the environment and climate change, while two projects were funded with Colombia and Mexico.
Major achievements during the 2013-2016 phase
During the 2013-2016 phase, the pilot instruments implemented with both Brazil and India, including AIT, FLASH and the Seed Money Programmes, were advantageous in terms of advancing joint research activities. The exploratory activities with Latin America helped to identify five focus countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru), and the Seed Money fund was introduced as a new instrument for research activities with them. The exploratory mandate with Vietnam, which was carried out jointly with ETH Zurich as Leading House for the Asia Pacific region, showed the high potential that this country has in terms of intensifying bilateral cooperation.
A total of 138 projects were financed in 13 project calls during this phase, and 12 seminars were organised. On several occasions, we implemented our activities in collaboration with other Swiss partners, including the swissnex-network and SNSF.
The work accomplished by EPFL as Leading House most certainly helped to strengthen scientific collaboration and contact networks between Switzerland and the focus countries, and these were confirmed to be of major interest to the Swiss researchers. The new Leading Houses will certainly galvanise the desired continued progress in this type of cooperation and we wish them all the best in their endeavours.
The activities of EPFL Leading House were managed from the Cooperation and Development Center (CODEV). CODEV will continue fostering scientific cooperation in education, research and innovation aiming at countries of the Global South through its diverse programmes and services.