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FP7: The Research Agenda for European competitiveness
This year the European Union will decide on investing more than 50,000 million euro for the period 2007–2013 to support research in Europe. If you consider that European industry will match much of this investment, FP7 represents the motivation of at least 100,000 million euro into researching new and innovative developments in all areas of European industry. This investment will be spread over the following high-level themes proposed for EU action: health, food, agriculture and biotechnology, Information and communication technologies (IST) nanosciences, nanotechnologies, materials and new production technologies, energy, environment (including climate change), transport (including aeronautics), socio-economic sciences and the humanities, security and space. The most interesting area for us is the IST area addressing the information and communication technologies. In the amended proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and the Council concerning the 7th framework programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007-2013) the provisional budget planned for IST projects is 9,110 million euro [1]. European Industry has responded to the scale of this research initiative by establishing a number of European Technology Platforms (ETPs). In the ICT area the key ETPs are the NEM Initiative (www.nem-initiative.org), eMobility (www.emobility.eu.org), NESSI (www.nessi-europe.com) and ISI (www.isi-initiative.eu.org). Each of these platforms have produced their own Strategic Research Agenda, and together they represent the interests and commitment of the wider Industrial and academic interests for future research in Europe. These SRA documents were submitted to the European Commission and their contents have been reflected in the draft work programme leading to the first few calls for projects under the 7th Framework. In fact the discussion in the different technology platforms is now focused on the creation of consortia who will propose projects to address the challenges stated in the SRAs of the ETPs. At the start of February 2007 the European Commission will host a major event in Cologne in Germany, where they plan to formally launch FP7 to an audience of over 5000 People. The dates for call one and two of the 7th framework programme will be formalised and race will be on to submit the best proposals and win the funding for your projects. Technical highlights The European Commission, with the help of the European Technology Platforms in the ICT area, have identified three ICT technology challenges that offer high potential for giving European industry a significant competitive advantage [2]:
Success in these areas will enable completely new services to be delivered rapidly with a much greater understanding and consideration for the User interests and behaviour. In fact in many of the innovative services it is expected that the users will play a much greater role in the creation and dissemination of exciting content. We’re entering into a new social era of communications where it is possible for any individual to get the attention of the world by just being interesting enough! You snooze, you lose I cannot advise anybody to wait for the February FP7 launch event as there is enough information in circulation now to start effective project planning. If you are serious about making a strategic research commitment you should be represented in the ETP that best matches your interests and already start finding the partners that share these ideas. You could also meet companies with new ideas that compliment yours. Different communities are already actively evolving into working groups which should lead to high-quality proposals and the ETPs will serve as facilitators to locate the right competences and to identify overlaps. The best advice to any aspiring project leaders and participants now is get active in your community as quick as possible. It is possible to get key roles in proposals by putting in the effort now, but, as time goes on, consortia will have been formed, the SRA coverage will be high, and only niche roles will be available. This is a clear situation where the early participants can define the projects in their best interests. References Please send us your comments on this article. |
