For Impacter, 2024 was marked by presence, renewal and update.
The first big event of 2024 for Impacter was EARMA Conference in Odense, in April, where, once again, we shared the booth with our friends from Research Connect. During the 3-day conference, not only did we showcase Impacter in our booth, but Paul also had the chance to contribute to a panel discussion on AI, discussing how it could be used in the best way.
During the first half of the year, we were dedicated to redesign and upgrade our platform. The most impactful upgrade happened after summer, when we integrated a LLM for AI suggestions and moved away from grading towards a color-coded list of priorities. With Impacter, privacy and confidentiality has always been our focus, which is why we didn’t immediately start working with LLM’s in our platform. But since August, Impacter users can ask and interact with our LLM for suggestions on how to improve their writing without compromising their privacy and confidentiality.
In comparison to 2023, the visits to Impacter in 2024 went up by 7.2%. During this year we gladly renewed the contract with Erasmus University and Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, whom we are looking forward to continue helping enhancing their grant proposals. We also welcomed new customers: EURAC, Arctic University of Norway and Hasselt University. We are eager to support them in strengthening their grant proposals and boosting the potential for securing additional funding. And not only of good news is a year made: the end of 2024 will bring the end of the contract with our oldest client, Utrecht University. Utrecht University has been involved in Impacter’s development since the start. During these years, we have supported hundreds of researchers with their proposals at Impacter. Ranging from national calls in the Talent Scheme towards Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe call topics. In total we have seen and supported over 1000 proposals! For the last 5 years, Utrecht University has significantly increased the amount of funding through European and National calls.
This year was also marked by several matchmaking projects, something we offer when the draft work programmes are circling around, usually once every 2 years. By using semantic algorithms, we matched draft call topics for Horizon Europe with researcher's publications. We are then able to provide a list with matches between the researcher and the call topic that is more similar to their profile and potential partners to collaborate with. This saves a significant amount of time from the grants support officers and allows the researcher to build a consortium early in time. The number of organizations that requested our matchmaking went from 10, in 2022, to 20 this year.
We are looking forward to a fruitful 2025 where we can support our customers, continuously improve the platform, do more matchmaking, because the EU will announce the final two years of Horizon Europe, and help new clients improving their grant writing.