The ISTOK-SOYUZ project has been initiated by consortium of the eight organizations from seven countries:
- Inno AG (coordinator, Germany)
- Russian Technology Transfer Network (RTTN) (Russia)
- Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISPRAS) (Russia)
- The Foundation Sophia Antipolis (FSA) (France)
- Technology Business Incubator “Kharkov Technologies” (TBI) (Ukraine)
- Republican Centre for Technology Transfer (RCTT) (Belorussia)
- Yerevan State University (YSU) (Armenia)
- National Innovation Fund of Kazakhstan (NIF) (Kazakhstan)
The overall objective of the ISTOK-SOYUZ project is to explore new opportunities for ICT collaboration between EU and Eastern Europe and Central Asia countries and to foster the EU ICT programme awareness activities in order to increase the number of the international collaboration projects involving partners from EECA countries.
Target groups: National ICT stakeholders, ICT R&D organizations and companies.
Target countries: Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia.
The ISTOK-SOYUZ project, based on the second outcomes and lessons learnt of the ISTOK.Ru project implemented in Russia in 2006-2008, will expand the ISTOK experience to the EECA countries, identifying and promoting visibility of mutual RTD potential and collaboration opportunities.
Throughout the 30-month project duration, consortium coordinated by Inno AG (Germany) will:
• promote the EU ICT programme and contribute to the definition of the collaboration strategies between EU and target countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia
• expand the EU-Russian ICT research community to 4 targeted countries (Ukraine, Belorussia, Armenia and Kazakhstan) through the opening of an ISTOK competence platform and implementing pilot actions such as networking & brokerage events and assistance to integration into the European Technology Platforms and Networks of Excellence;
• provide support to research teams from the targeted countries with the goal of increasing the number of ICT FP7 partnerships between researches from Europe and targeted countries;
• increase the visibility of mutual R&D potential and networking of ICT stakeholders;
• increase the number of joint proposals under the EU ICT programme.
The clustering approach involving two other INCO projects – SCUBE-ICT (http://www.scube-ict.eu/ ) and EXTEND (http://www.extend.eu/ ) – will be applied in particular for the specific activities in Ukraine, Belorussia and Armenia in order to increase the benefit for the European research from the support actions of three projects.