More than 250 researchers from Korean universities, national institutes and industry attended the 7th EU-Korea Research and Innovation Day held in Seoul, on 22 February.

The main purpose of the event was to navigate support measures for Korea’s participation in Horizon Europe by listening to opinions from domestic universities and research institutes. Also, the event aimed to provide information on Korea-EU or Korea-Europe R&D cooperation programmes to promote collaboration.

EU-Korea R&I Day is co-organized by the Ministry of Science and ICT(MSIT) and the European Commission, and hosted by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) and the Delegation of the EU to the RoK. At this event organized in Seoul, 14 embassies of European Countries lead by 9 ambassadors joined Maria Castillo-Fernandez, EU Ambassador to Korea, and Signe Ratso, Deputy Director-General of Directorate-General for Research and Innovation(DG RTD) at the European Commission.

Ms. Signe Ratso kicked off the plenary session by introducing Horizon Europe and Korea’s participation in the programme. It was followed by the MSIT’s presentation informing the state of play of Korea’s association and its expected benefits for Korean researchers. The NRF presented existing Horizon Europe participation supporting mechanism for Korean researchers, such as Korea-EU Joint Research Programme. And also it introduced cooperation supporting instrument, such as Korea-EU Research Centre(KERC), and other R&D cooperation programmes between Korea and European countries. Finally, Professor Kwon Woojin, at the department of Physics at UNIST, shared his experience as Horizon Europe ERC Grantee, and Dr. Yoon Daesub, director of mobility user experience research section at ETRI, shared his experiences of Horizon Europe Joint research project.

In a following panel discussion session, panels pointed out main concerns and obstacles about participation, for example, language barrier, heterogeneous funding system, administrative burden, lack of network and so on. Panels suggested few measures to address such issues while talking about their own experiences. In addition, a networking and Q&A sessions were organized, and EU member states promoted the countries R&D programmes through a promotional booth during the event.