H.F.R.I. Portal

H.F.R.I.: Supporting Research, Enhancing Innovation

Date: December 24, 2020

H.F.R.I. was established in 2016 with the aim of promoting research and innovation, in the framework of the national strategy for research and innovation. The Foundation supports unrestricted research and the scientific capacity of the country, having scientific quality and excellence as a unique criterion, through the financing of research projects, scholarships, the acquisition of valuable research equipment as well as actions to connect science with society and emblematic actions.

It has an independent form of government (General Assembly – Scientific Council – Director & Deputies) while for the first time the scientific and academic community participates in shaping the research policy of the country. The total available budget of H.F.R.I. for actions amounts to 276 million, coming from the European Investment Bank, the Public Investment Program and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).To date (26/11/2020) 20 actions amounting to 276 million have been pre-published following up on the operational plan of the organization. 12 actions with a total budget of 187 million have already been announced. Within the 12 actions announced, 3437 applications for scholarships and 8927 research project proposals have been submitted and evaluated or are under evaluation, while 938 scholarships and 574 research projects are funded. Actions of a total budget of 89 million are expected to be announced as follows:

  • by the end of this year: 1 action as well as 1 call in the framework of the action co-financed by SNF,
  • until the beginning of 2024 the remaining 7 actions as well as the calls in the framework of action co-financed by SNF.

Moreover, the following have taken place:

a. collaboration with the SNF for the co-financing of research projects of Greek Scientists, which were evaluated positively by the ERC but were not funded due to limited available budget, with a total budget of 10million of which 5 million are donated by the SNF. Repeated calls are published for this action until the budget is exhausted.

b. cooperation agreement with the University of TEXAS.

In addition, the implementation of an online portal with a personalized orientation is under development for:

  • submitting scholarship applications and research project proposals,
  • the evaluation of scholarship applications and research project proposals,
  • the submission and examination of objections,
  • the management and certification of funded scholarships and research projects.
  • the Registry of Certified evaluators and experts of H.F.R.I. according to the current legislation.

This platform in combination with the electronic protocol and the electronic handling and archiving of documents aims to achieve the goals of H.F.R.I. FOR speed, reliability and transparency in a very suffocating operating framework.