"BILAT-RUS focuses on enhancing the bilateral S&T Partnership between Russia and the EU. The project aims at contributing to the implementation of the Common Space on Research between the EU and Russia. It will ensure coherence and coordination of various activities under the umbrella of the EU-Russian S&T agreement and will contribute to a stronger coordination of bilateral activities with Russia at EU and Member State level. The major objectives of BILAT-RUS are: • to facilitate coherent information dissemination and awareness raising on EU-Russian cooperation (database on S&T research institutes, case studies on good cooperation practice, web-portal, partner search tool, information events); • to contribute to the optimisation of the framework and the instruments for enhanced future EU-Russian cooperation (inventory of existing instruments and regulations, examples of good cooperation practice, options for optimising the common legal and organisational frame, suggestions for practical and efficient joint funding mechanisms); • to create a knowledge base for emerging horizontal issues of cooperation (mobility, S&T infrastructure and innovation); • to meet the needs of joint thematic EU-Russian Working Groups on S&T cooperation (Health, Food/Agriculture/Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, Energy); • to exploit the potential of Russian Mirror Technology Platforms through linking them with their European counterparts. The project proposal for BILAT-RUS is built on joint EU-Russian interest and aims at mutual benefit. Synergies will be established with other bilateral or bi-regional EU-Russian projects from FP6 and FP7 (such as SCOPE-EAST and the upcoming IncoNet EECA targeting Eastern Europe and Central Asia), bilateral S&T agreements and other initiatives between the EU Member States and Russia. The consortium consists of ten partners (five of them from Russia) with in-depth experience of EU-Russian cooperation in S&T. The Russian NCPs are associated partners."