One and a half year of our NewSOC project have elapsed under more than challenging circumstances. It is not common for a joint project of our kind, which has 16 partners and many diverse research activities, to entirely relying on virtual exchange of information, results, and critical issues and to agreeing on contingency plans. After 18 months, it was the time for the mid-term evaluation. The evaluation meeting was of course also virtual. Despite these challenges, we succeeded to present the progress of the NewSOC project convincingly.
We received detailed, valuable feedback from the reviewers, which allows us to improve our project work further over the coming period.
We were particularly happy about the positive comments on how we acted on the unexpected challenges arising with Covid-19:
“The report shows that the consortium managed this period as best as possible by proposing and submitting a new activity schedule with 6 months of extension, which got approved by the project officer.”
“All administration tasks have successfully been navigated and technical partner-to-partner and partner-to-coordinator communications and collaborations have been facilitated as per the project requirements.”
Furthermore, the reviewers acknowledged the large effort to disseminate the project results:
“The project will receive an admirable exposure through the various dissemination activities going on, which is exemplary. The EU funding is acknowledged adequately in the outputs.”
Such positive feedback gives a motivation boost to continuing our research with hopefully improving overall conditions as the consequences of Covid-19 are expected to retreat.