ASOCIATIA INVENIO

Their core work

ASOCIATIA INVENIO is a Romanian NGO specializing in science communication and public engagement with research. Their work centers on making scientific knowledge accessible to general audiences through interactive formats — hands-on experiments, TV inserts, and national education platforms. Both of their H2020 projects were part of the "Researchers for Humanity" initiative under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, which connects researchers directly with citizens and institutions. In practice, they design and run public science events, produce media content about research, and act as a bridge between the scientific community and Romanian society.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their H2020 participation spans only 2014–2017 and consists of two consecutive iterations of the same initiative, so evolution is incremental rather than transformative. In the first project (R4H1415), the focus was tightly operational: building a national platform, producing TV content, running hands-on activities — concrete delivery tools. By the second project (RN1617), the language broadened to 'public and private research' and 'sci-fun experiments', suggesting a move from infrastructure-building toward wider reach and audience diversification. The overall arc is from constructing a vehicle for science communication toward embedding it into both public and private research ecosystems.

They appear to be deepening their position as a national science popularization actor in Romania, with growing interest in bridging formal research institutions and private-sector audiences — though their H2020 activity ended in 2017 and there is no visible continuation in the data.

How they like to work

ASOCIATIA INVENIO has both led and joined projects, coordinating the first Researchers for Humanity edition and participating in the second — suggesting comfort in either role within a single thematic programme. Their consortium is extremely small: only 3 unique partners across both projects, all within a single country, indicating they work in tight, locally-grounded teams rather than broad European networks. For a potential partner, this means you get a focused, committed collaborator rather than an organization managing multiple simultaneous alliances.

With just 3 unique partners and collaboration limited to a single country (Romania), their network is highly concentrated and local. There is no evidence of cross-border consortium building in their H2020 record.

What sets them apart

ASOCIATIA INVENIO occupies a niche that most research organizations ignore: translating science into formats that general and private-sector audiences actually engage with — live events, TV, hands-on demonstrations. In Romania, they appear to be one of the few NGOs with a track record of running this kind of national-scale researcher-public engagement under EU funding. For consortia that need a Romanian civil society partner with credibility in science popularization, they are a practical fit where larger academic institutions would be overqualified.

Highlights from their portfolio

• R4H1415
  Their founding H2020 project as coordinator, establishing the Researchers for Humanity national platform with the largest budget (EUR 67,625) and introducing the TV and hands-on formats that defined their identity.
• RN1617
  The follow-on edition demonstrating that the platform was sustained and expanded to include private research audiences, validating the model from the first project.