Prepare stronger Horizon Europe proposals. Support every grant better.
Built for research managers, National Contact Points, and grant officers, with Horizon Europe proposal preparation as the main use case. Work from call and work-programme interpretation through consortium building, writing, compliance, and reviewer-style feedback — while keeping the methods useful for ERC, MSCA, Erasmus+, national, philanthropic, and other funding schemes. Sessions combine hands-on use of relevant AI tools with optional training in building customized tools for your own office work.
Research offices that want this for their own pre- and post-award team, and offices or department heads who bring it in alongside researcher training. Tell us which — we weight the modules accordingly.
Who this track is for.
- ●Research development officers
- ●Grant officers
- ●National Contact Points (NCPs)
- ●Research office leadership
- ●Faculty-level research coordinators
- ●Horizon Europe / ERC / MSCA support teams
This is not a generic AI overview, and not a promise that AI will write winning grants on its own. Participants bring live calls, drafts, or workflows and work on them in session.
Preparing a consortium or training organizations beyond the university research office? See the focused program for proposal teams, coordinators, research institutes, public bodies, NGOs, healthcare and innovation organizations, and SMEs.
Explore Horizon Europe proposal training →Use the right tools. Build your own where it helps.
Research managers learn to use relevant AI tools across the grant lifecycle, and can also learn to create useful customized tools for their own recurring work. Modules are selected with ALE to form a coherent program within the available training time.
- Horizon Europe call and work-programme analysis
- Proposal writing and reviewer-style review
- Funder policies, privacy and integrity
- Funding-call interpretation
- Internal researcher guidance
- Proposal-review support
- Reviewer / expert identification
- Recurring researcher communications
- Recurring information-processing tasks
You choose the level.
You choose the level that fits your office. The boot camp runs as Introductory, Intermediate, or Advanced. Where the office is the participant, we go deeper into daily pre/post-award workflow — call scanning, fit decisions, internal review, reporting. Where the office is the buyer for a wider audience, we widen the examples across departments. For experienced research offices we shorten the AI overview and spend more time on agents, evaluation, source reliability, funder-specific workflows (Horizon Europe, ERC, MSCA, Erasmus+, national funders).
Bring real work: an open grant call, a draft proposal, a partner-search brief, an internal reporting template, or an institutional workflow you want to automate. We provide sample cases when needed, but research offices get the most value when they work on their own materials.
10 core modules + closing reflection
Tap any module to expand. Every module is customized to your group's level, discipline, and live materials.
01IntroductionGenerative AI tools for research management · Module A · 3 hours+
Learn to compare frontier models and RAG-based research tools, and choose the right AI approach for grant-management workflows.
- AI tools in research: Frontier models vs. RAG
02Grant PreparationIdeation, calls, consortia · Module B · 4–5 hours+
Learn to interpret Horizon Europe calls and work programmes, assess topic fit, develop competitive ideas, and identify potential consortium partners, with methods transferable to other funders.
- Ideation & brainstorming strong funding topics
- Improve critical thinking
- Finding grant calls and relevant Horizon Europe topics
- Reading calls and work programmes
- Find partners for consortium
03Proposal WritingStructured writing & review · Module C · 4–5 hours+
Learn to develop Horizon Europe Excellence, Impact, and Implementation sections, use AI to simulate reviewer feedback and improve compliance, with techniques that transfer to other schemes.
- Generative structured writing
- Horizon Europe Proposal Writing Guru
- Erasmus+ proposals
- GPT as reviewer + Profectus.academy
- Step-by-step prompting with evaluation form
04Grant Strategy & ManagementPortfolio analytics & ops · Module D · 4–5 hours+
Learn to analyze funding portfolios, build surveys, extract insights from reports and emails, and break large grant operations into manageable steps.
- Funding analytics & institutional strategy
- Survey building
- Research intelligence
- Graph creation
- Multi-doc Q&A across reports & emails
- GPT Scheduled Tasks — break down large grants ops into steps
- Find info in your own emails & files
05Research CommunicationDissemination at scale · Module E · 3–4 hours+
Learn to create slides, reports, and campaigns that communicate research impact clearly and consistently across channels.
- Slide creation
- On-brand marketing campaigns
- Report generation
- Article → podcast / slides / video
- SEO for AI
- Image & video generation (group activity — image for your lab)
06Data Privacy & Research IntegrityUse AI responsibly · Module F · 3–4 hours+
Learn to protect sensitive data, spot integrity risks, and understand the limits of AI detection in grant and research settings.
- Data privacy & copyright — customize ChatGPT, temporary chat, increase privacy
- Research integrity & avoiding plagiarism
- AI writing detection (and its limits)
07Funder & Journal PoliciesStay ahead of policy · Module G · 1.5 hours+
Learn to interpret funder and European Commission AI policies and prepare compliant, transparent AI declarations.
- AI is changing scholarly publication — are you ready?
- Funder & European Commission policy + AI declarations (2026 updates)
08Customized AI Tools & WorkflowsBuild useful tools for your own work · Module H · 3–4 hours+
Research managers start from a recurring task in their own office and build a customized AI tool or workflow around it. No coding is required. This is training for your own work — not the implementation of institutional systems.
Learn to build custom GPTs and reusable instructions, use Microsoft Copilot for routine tasks, and connect AI to email, files and meetings where it genuinely helps.
- Custom GPTs (e.g. proposal writer)
- MCP Connectors & skills for email, folders, meetings, research tracking
- Microsoft Copilot: extract requirements from a call
- Microsoft Copilot: check proposal compliance against the call
- Microsoft Copilot: turn analysis into PI follow-up emails
- Microsoft Copilot: convert meeting notes into action plans
- Multimodal outputs from your library & files
- Best prompting practices (group activity — write an LOI)
09Bonus ModuleChoose your LLM + have some fun · · 1 hour · recommended for 2–3 day trainings+
Learn to compare frontier models side by side and identify the best fit for different grant-management and communication tasks.
- Which frontier model fits your needs? (live demo)
- Create a song · image editing · digital twin · GPT voice mode
10ConclusionBoot camp reflection · · 1 hour+
Reflect on key takeaways, plan how to apply what you learned in your own work, and gather feedback for continuous improvement.
- Discussion: major takeaways, use cases, favorite tools, one-word closing
- Practical implications for your institution
- Post-session survey + final presentation
Learning objectives & tangible outcomes.
- →Use AI to identify relevant funding opportunities and analyse complex call texts.
- →Support Horizon Europe proposal development and map potential consortium partners.
- →Review Excellence, Impact, and Implementation narratives against evaluation criteria and simulate reviewer feedback.
- →Build reusable research-office workflows: call digests, PI follow-ups, reporting.
- →Advise researchers on responsible AI use, declarations, and emerging funder policy.
Depending on the modules selected, participants may leave with practical experience of relevant AI tools, reusable prompts and methods, stronger approaches to verification and responsible AI use, and — in customized-workflow sessions — a working tool built around their own office work. For example:
- ✓A Horizon Europe call and work-programme analysis workflow
- ✓A funder-fit checklist
- ✓A consortium-building map
- ✓A proposal review prompt set
- ✓AI-supported PI follow-up templates
- ✓A compliance checklist for AI use
- ✓In customized-workflow sessions: a working customized tool for a recurring task in your office
Trusted by research offices across Europe.
Last month I had the privilege of chairing the AI for Research Management Bootcamp at Imperial College London, and what a fantastic two days of learning, discussion, and practical exploration it was! We were especially fortunate to receive training from Avi Staiman, a world-renowned expert in AI for research management. Avi brought a rare blend of strategic insight and practical know-how, helping us cut through the complexity of AI and explore how it can support research planning, stakeholder engagement, communication, and data privacy utilising best practices. We were thrilled to welcome 80+ participants, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive — a real testament to the relevance of the topic and the quality of the delivery.
I'd like to sincerely thank you for delivering the AI Bootcamp. We truly appreciated your insights and experience in introducing so many AI tools relevant to our work. It was a great experience, and I especially valued how the training brought together both research managers and researchers. Being able to test AI tools using topics directly relevant to our faculty made the sessions even more practical and engaging. We also really appreciate the recording, resources, and materials you shared after the training — these will be incredibly useful as we continue exploring AI in our work.
Come prepared with…
- ●A laptop
- ●One active grant call you're working on
- ●Sample proposal or LOI draft (if available)
- ●Completed pre-bootcamp survey
- ●Registration for tools marked in green
Prep & pre-work
Everything participants need before the boot camp — what to bring, accounts to register, short readings — lives on a dedicated prep page so it's easy to share with your cohort.