COMET

The COMET (Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies) funding scheme of the FFG (Austrian Research Promotion Agency) promotes the creation of competence centres which have at their heart a programme of top-quality research established jointly by science and industry. Since 2011, UAR in Upper Austria has been coordinating all activities conducted under the COMET scheme and has initiated a number of measures. For instance, the results of the fifth call for COMET K projects in April 2014 were extremely encouraging. Upper Austria took top spot for the number of submitted projects and the number of approved projects. More than half of the top-class projects submitted involve or are headed by Upper Austrian companies, and of the ten projects submitted with Upper Austrian involvement, six were approved. Four of the approved projects are lead-managed by Upper Austrian consortiums. The third call for COMET K1 centres also brought excellent results for Upper Austria. All four of the K1 centres submitted that have Upper Austrian involvement were approved by the panel at its meeting in July 2014. Three of the four centres are lead-managed by Upper Austrian consortiums. Overall, these two COMET calls brought approval for €37 million in state funds for Upper Austria.