A Snapshot of StandICT.eu 2029 Batch #2 Fellowships
StandICT.eu Open Call #2 ran from February 23rd to April 24th 2026, and received 143 fellowship applications. In total, 78 fellowships were selected, amounting to 675,953€ in direct funding. Moreover, the funded applications received an average quality score of 7,8 (on a 1 to 10 scale), and the threshold for approved applications was 7.04.
One of the critical purposes of StandICT.eu 2029 is to support the activity of European ICT experts to contribute to the modernisation and consolidation of the European standardisation ecosystem as well as to the valorisation of their research outputs, to efficiently respond to the EU’s ambitions towards specific thematic ICT areas, such as Artificial Intelligence (contributing in particular to CEN-CENELEC JTC 21) and technical topics covered by the EC Standardisation Request on high-risk AI-system which were the focus of the announcement of Open Call 2.
The selected fellowships contribute to the development of international ICT standards on strategic ICT areas that are framed within the Rolling Plan for ICT standardisation published and revised annually by the European Commission. In Batch #2, the tackled horizontal and vertical ICT topics are distributed across the five key areas as follows:
- Foundational drivers: 15 fellowships focusing on Cybersecurity (14 fellowships), and Data economy (1).
- Key enablers and security: 50 fellowships focusing on Artificial Intelligence (34 fellowships), 5G/6G (4), Cloud and edge computing (4), Accessibility of ICT (1), Data interoperability (1), Electronic identification (1), Internet of Things (4), and Quantum technologies (1).
- Innovation for Digital Single Market: 6 fellowships focusing on Blockchain and DLT (4 fellowships), Fintech & RegTech (1), Web 4.0 and virtual worlds (1), Retail payments (1).
- Sustainable growth: 5 fellowships focusing on ICT Environmental impact (2), Smart Grids and Smart Metering (1), Robotics and autonomous systems (1), and Construction building information modelling(1).
- Societal challenges: 2 fellowships focusing on Digital health, healthy living and ageing (1), Safety, transparency and due process online (1).
Fellowship Profiles
The funded experts span a broad geographic spectrum across 27 EU or associated countries, with the majority hailing from France (11 fellowships), UK (9), and Spain (8). They represent different organisational types, including SMEs (32%), IT consultancy/Development (23%), large enterprises (4%), Academia and Research (23%), associations (1%), Government and public services (4%), and standardisation organisations or national standardisation bodies (3%).
24% of the funded experts are female, and the remaining 76% are men or prefer not to disclose their gender. Moreover, this is the first edition where nearly half (49%) of the selected fellows are new to the StandICT.eu programme, and the remainder have received funding from the previous StandICT.eu open calls.
The funded fellows hold different positions within the targeted working group or technical committee; 26% have a leadership role as (co-) chair or (co-) convenor, while the remainder act as contributing expert members (35 fellowships), project leaders (8), editors (5), standards authors (8) or group secretaries (1).
Engaged SDOs, Organisations and European Projects
67% of the fellows’ activities contribute to the activities of Committees or Working Groups operating in global SDOs, including ISO/IEC, ISO, IEC, ITU, IEEE, while the remainder works with European Standardisation Organisations (ESOs), covering CEN, CEN/CENELEC and ETSI, or National Standards Bodies (DS), with international standardisation associations, including OASIS and EDSTAR.
Monitoring of Batch #1 fellowships began in June 2026. Upon completion of activities, their profiles are featured on the Fellows page, and their contributions are included in the EUOS repository.
