FUND-RI

Europe’s Research Infrastructures (RIs) are strategic assets for frontier science, industrial innovation, and public policy delivery. Yet the funding landscape remains fragmented, opaque, and misaligned with RI lifecycles, public missions, and evolving policy priorities, undermining sustainability and preventing the development of effective synergies across governance levels and funding instruments. FUND-RI offers a systemic, evidence-based response. It moves beyond fragmented practices by building a toolbox of validated business models and actionable recommendations for funding, governance, and strategic alignment. It focuses on what works, under which conditions, and for whom, using stakeholder co-creation and comparative case studies to support uptake. FUND-RI will deliver: - A systemic map of funding streams across all RI lifecycle stages. - A typology of business and funding models, tested against real-world cases. - A validated cost estimation methodology applicable to all RI types, with special focus on distributed configurations. - A strategic set of policy recommendations and an uptake toolkit for both funders and RI managers, supporting long-term sustainability, multi-level and system-wide alignment. The project addresses persistent barriers: disconnected funding streams, weak lifecycle foresight, underdeveloped synergies, and poor integration with policy-driven priorities. It also develops novel approaches to RI sustainability, ensuring alignment for scientific excellence, industrial innovation needs, public policy objectives, and overall lifecycle needs. Strategically designed, FUND-RI will support the next EU Framework Programme (FP10), ESFRI evolution, and ERA policy implementation. With a compact, high-capacity consortium of ERICs, universities, RTOs, and policy think tanks, all acting as RI hosts, managers, or policy contributors, FUND-RI will help aligning funding, governance, and access with the needs of science, industry, and society.