The Grant

Clean Tech in CEE – Funding, Gaps & Policy Shifts
Slovenia, Innovation Fund, widening, deep tech and raw materials
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In this episode I’m joined by Nina Meglič, director of ACT-SI – Association CleanTech Slovenia, project manager at a deep tech spin-out from the National Institute of Chemistry and part of the national contact point team for the STEP platform on strategic technologies. We start with the clean tech reality in Central & Eastern Europe: structural differences with Western Europe, missing infrastructure to decarbonise, investor scepticism and the fact that R&D in Slovenia is heavily dependent on EU grants. Nina uses the Innovation Fund as a concrete example – Slovenia has only one funded project, companies are intimidated by complexity, and some technologies (like CCS) are hardly realistic given the current legislative and infrastructure context.
From there we zoom out to competition, AI and policy shifts. Proposal numbers rise as AI speeds up writing; at the same time Nina sees signs of AI being used in evaluations, sometimes producing nonsense comments. Budgets per project shrink as more partners are packed into consortia, and access to key European partnerships is limited by high membership fees that smaller CEE organisations can’t justify. We talk about widening, the EIC pre-accelerator, policymaker capacity, raw materials and trade policy, and how deep tech startups in Slovenia struggle to raise investment when there is no campus infrastructure and investors prefer to fund similar companies in Western Europe. The episode closes with Nina’s message for the next EU financial framework: acknowledge the two-speed reality, adjust instruments, and keep clean tech and industrial capacity firmly on the agenda even as attention shifts to security and AI.

Impact in EU Projects – From Innovation Theatre to Adoption
Why so many results die after funding, and what must change

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In this episode I’m joined by Jorge Gonzalez, director of Ticbiomed in Spain, to talk about impact in EU projects – not as a buzzword in a template, but as the messy reality after the pilot ends. Jorge has worked in more than 20 EU projects, many of them cascade funding schemes in health, and sees the same pattern again and again: projects deliver working solutions, clinicians and partners are excited, and then… nothing. No tender, no contract, no deployment. We discuss how this repeated non-adoption doesn’t just waste taxpayers’ money – it also kills the innovation mindset in hospitals and other public organisations as professionals conclude “this was a waste of my time, never involve me again.”
From there we dig into structural causes and possible fixes. On the organisation side: innovation units joining projects without strong links to business owners or budgets, governance gaps between pilot teams and those responsible for long-term deployment, and decisions left until after the project when everyone has moved on. On the funding side: EU projects as the “best money in Europe”, prescriptive call texts that create Frankenstein consortia, and impact sections that can be written by ChatGPT without any real accountability. Jorge shares the ideas behind his Impactful Innovation initiative – including policy papers and lobbying in Brussels – and concrete proposals: putting serious weight on credible post-project uptake in selection criteria, asking for governance and budget commitments, following up on exploitation during and after projects, and using carrots (visibility, awards) rather than only sticks to reward real adoption.

Time codes:
01:24 Guest introduction and fly in
06:45 TICBIOMED’s experience on the ground
11:37 When innovation becomes counterproductive
21:29 Structural reasons behind the problem
34:36 What needs to change: from pilots to impact
44:13 Reflections and advice
48:11 The toughest challenge

Juniors in Research Management – Between Research and Support
Leaving research, identity, skills and the job market reality

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In this episode I’m joined by Marina Kliuchko, who has done “everything right” in research – biology degree, PhD in psychology/brain science, several postdocs and big collaborative projects – and is now in a transition towards research support and administration. We talk about the moment of realisation that the classic professorship track didn’t actually feel attractive, even though everyone around her assumed it was the only logical next step. Marina describes the doubts that followed (“is there something wrong with me as a scientist?”), the conservatism of the academic ladder, and the feeling of running up a hill without ever stopping to ask whether this is really where she wants to go.
From there, we move into the world of juniors in research management: what it means to prefer a supporting role, to enjoy turning other people’s ideas into concrete tasks, and then to meet a job market where hiring panels worry she’ll be bored or “run back to research”. Marina shares honestly how rejections hurt, how lonely the process can be, and what has helped her hold on: soft-skill and entrepreneurship bootcamps, mentoring conversations, trying out funding strategy work, and eventually going to a career consultant to get her story straight. We close on the bigger picture: why PhD students and postdocs need earlier, better career development support, and why recognising their broader skills isn’t a luxury but a responsibility.
Time codes:
01:49 Guest introduction and fly in
03:42 Why leave research? The moment of realisation
14:00 From doing research to supporting research
18:59 Being young, experienced, and stuck in between
35:11 The job market reality for junior research managers
48:05 Reflections and advice
57:28 The toughest challenge

Microcredentials in Erasmus+ – Concept, Policy & Practice
Learning outcomes, assessment and making it work in real projects

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In this episode I’m joined by Daiana Huber and Samuel Bogdan to talk about micro-credentials – a term that now pops up in Erasmus+ calls, policy papers and conferences, but is still fuzzy for many of us. Daiana starts from the pedagogical side: what a credential is as an artifact of learning, why microcredentials are not the learning process itself, and how they sit on top of competences (knowledge, skills and attitudes) and learning outcomes. We talk about the difference between “I attended a workshop” and “I can actually do something in a defined context”, why a participation certificate is not a microcredential, and why proper microcredentials require clear outcomes, evidence and an assessment process.
Then we move into EU policy and practice. We place microcredentials in the context of the Year of Skills, Union of Skills and the policy push for portability of skills, and discuss the role of the European Digital Credential Issuer. From there, Daiana walks through the proposal phase: when it makes sense to include microcredentials in Erasmus+ projects, what evaluators are (and aren’t) looking for, and how to design work packages that cover competence frameworks, learning outcomes, pedagogy, learning experiences and assessment instead of just throwing the word into a paragraph. Sami takes over for the implementation phase: reading pedagogy and policy, experimenting in the digital credential sandbox, assigning issuer/assessor/QA roles to partners, and discovering that nobody will hand you a recipe – you have to build, test and iterate your own process. The episode is both a conceptual deep dive and a practical reality check for anyone tempted to add “microcredentials” to their next proposal.

Time codes:
01:41 Introduction and fly in
09:57 Why has microcredentials been introduced
16:47 What is a microcredential? Defining the term
27:51 Microcredentials in the proposal phase
39:11 Microcredentials in the implementation phase
53:28 Recommendations and advice
57:55 The toughest challenge

Proposal writing, project delivery, compliance and the human impact

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In this episode I’m joined by Chiara Liguori to talk about Erasmus+ from the perspective of small organisations, where a “team” can mean two paid staff and a group of volunteers. Chiara’s career started in a Brussels-based youth NGO working on Erasmus+ with just a Secretary General, herself and sometimes an intern, plus a group of volunteers. We talk about the capacity challenge: long, technical forms, a parallel universe of jargon, and a programme that often assumes internal systems and trained staff that tiny NGOs simply don’t have. Chiara shares how she learnt proposal writing on the job – from googling basic terms and taking trainings to using previous grants as templates – and what it feels like to be the person slowly taking over full responsibility for drafting an entire application.
We then move into the funded side of Erasmus+: balancing project delivery with administrative compliance when the same person who runs a workshop in the morning uploads all the evidence in the afternoon. Chiara walks through the simple tools that made a huge difference - a big, colour-coded office calendar and a live Excel sheet linking each work package to concrete activities, dates and metrics - and how treating compliance as a habit instead of a once-a-year scramble helped protect institutional memory when people moved on. Finally, we discuss the human impact: late nights, stacked deadlines, volunteers and staff juggling other jobs, the risk of burnout, and the emotional weight of knowing that if something goes wrong, you’re not disappointing a faceless department but real people you care about. At the same time, we talk about what keeps people in this space: mission, community and the very real skills and confidence you gain from wearing multiple hats.

Time codes:
01:41 Introduction
03:59 Fly in
05:14 The capacity challenge
13:59 The proposals
28:17 The projects
43:16 The human impact
55:08 Advice
56:59 The toughest challenge