Abstract

At the University for Continuing Education Krems, Austria, we are committed to enhance our support for 370 researchers distributed across 18 departments and organized into three faculties. Each faculty has its own primary research focus, integrated into five transdisciplinary research areas. These areas encompass a wide range of subjects, from health and medicine to economics and globalization, and from education to arts and architecture. To aid researchers in securing funding for their projects, the Office for Grant Acquisition at UWK assists during the pre-award phase of European research projects.
In the academic year 2022/23, we conducted the 'UWK Horizon Europe Opportunity Assessment´. This comprehensive analysis delved into third-party funding strategies and success rates across 18 research departments. Our primary objective was to identify and emphasize potential opportunities for researchers, thereby enabling them to plan their applications for Horizon Europe projects well in advance.
However, we recognize that the process of manually screening for upcoming calls proved to be time-consuming and somewhat one-dimensional. To significantly enhance and streamline this process, we are actively pursuing the implementation of a cutting-edge AI-based IT tool. This tool will not only perform the task of searching for upcoming calls but will also possess the capability to intelligently extract relevant keywords from our university's project and publication databases, as well as various repositories. By utilizing predefined matching score thresholds, we will be able to precisely identify and correlate research interests and expertise with the available funding opportunities.
The advantages of this implementation are manifold. It will not only expedite the process of identifying suitable calls but also enable us to provide researchers with highly tailored advice on which calls align most closely with their research areas and expertise. This personalized guidance will empower our researchers to develop more efficient and effective funding strategies, ultimately leading to a timelier and resource-efficient planning of proposal submissions.
In summary, our commitment to leveraging AI technology in this endeavor represents a significant step forward in optimizing the research funding acquisition process at our university, fostering greater collaboration, innovation, and success among our dedicated community of researchers.