Following an exciting week of meetings, networking and – even dancing – at the first NPC-HLG meeting held under the Israeli EUREKA Chairmanship in Tel Aviv in late October, it appears the EUREKA Network is off to a strong and promising year. The yearly forecast of collaborative R&D projects, generated by the National Program Coordinators (NPC’s), indicates that the network – for the first time – may generate more than 350 projects this year. These projects bring together two or more countries to create technology and services in a variety of industry fields – manufacturing, transport, IT, telecom and electronics, energy technology, biological sciences, and more. EUREKA cooperative industrial-driven projects are supported through EUREKA’s 40 member countries’ national funding bodies.

350. This is an unprecedented figure – in fact, if it proves accurate, it will be a record year in terms of the number of projects being generated by the Network. This is a true indication of the growing demand of European industry and the usefulness of EUREKA instruments – the individual projects, EUROSTARS, Umbrella and Cluster projects – as well as of the necessity of increasing the budgets needed to support EUREKA projects. We’ll of course have to wait till year’s end to see if the forecast rings true!

Head of EUREKA Secretariat, Luuk Borg, and NPC Chairman Israel Shamay discuss the promising EUREKA project forecast for 2010-2011 during the first NPC-HLG meetings in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Luuk Borg, Director of the Brussels based EUREKA Secretariat, discusses the prospects for the coming year. Under the Israeli Presidency, EUREKA looks set for rapid progress, a number of developments with new potential member nations and more. Mr Borg was interviewed at the 2010 European Business Summit in Brussels.

Today – 25th June 2010 – Israel officially became Chair of the rotating presidency of the EUREKA Network. The handover from Germany took place in Berlin at the annual Ministers Conference.

To accept the chair, Israeli Minister for Industry, Trade and Labour, Binjamin Ben Eliezer addressed the conference about his hopes for the coming year.

He highlighted the vital role of innovation and technological development to Israel. As a small country with a lack of local trading partners and even fewer natural resources to be exploited, the early move into the knowledge economy and high-tech areas have served them well. When combined with the fact that Europe is Israel’s largest trading partner, the coming twelve months offer a golden opportunity.

And they plan to use it! Five conferences are planned, starting in Tel Aviv in October and culminating in Jerusalem in June 2011. There is a clear desire build new partnerships and strategic opportunities wherever they may be found.

This desire for new opportunities will reach further afield than EUREKA is accustomed to. An important role of the chair is to assist in the negotiations to bring new member countries into the club. Germany announced today that Bulgaria has become a full member. As a member of the EU 27, it was simply a matter of time until Bulgaria joined.

In contrast, Minister Ben Eliezer today announced his plans to forge new links with South America and to work towards bringing Egypt into the group as well.

With such large efforts already well underway to develop new products and technologies (unlike the EU, Israel already spends nearly 5% of GDP on research and development annually), it seems likely that the desire for opportunities with South America is part of a wider goal to open new markets for product sales.

This ambition is part of a clearly visible urgency towards action and monetisation that Israel brings to the Chair. With the global economy suffering as it is, and the EU facing the prospect of another round of unmet innovation investment targets, this urgency may be just what is needed.

Hanover, Germany, 19 April 2010— Even with Europe’s planes grounded, EUREKA’s participation at the annual Hannover Messe got off to a flying start today, with a visit by Federal Research Minister Annette Schavan to the EUREKA stand and a well-attended press conference led by European Parliamentarian Godlieve Quisthoudt-Rowohl, Walter Mönig, who heads Germany’s Chairmanship of EUREKA and Luuk Borg, Head of the EUREKA Secretariat.

Download the full Press Release here!

VINNOVA, the main funding agency for EUREKA projects companies and research organizations wishing to participate in EUREKA projects, welcomes and supports the efforts to discuss and further develop Community innovation policies. VINNOVA also agrees with the general description of the importance of innovation for long term sustainable growth and as a mean to address major societal challenges, as well as the observations on how the preconditions for innovation in Europe and the rest of the world are changing rapidly.

VINNOVA pays special attention to the the support for the SMEs, and sees them as becoming increasingly important as change agents in the economy, as important channels for commercialization of research and as sources of new growth companies.

The solutions addressing the important challenges concerning the stimulation of growth of innovative SMEs, must be firmly based on a European Added Value perspective. This is especially important when it comes to public support to SMEs, since assessment of growth potential and competencies of SMEs applying for support often requires local knowledge and proximity.

A negative feature of current Community Programmes, especially problematic from the point of view of SMEs, is the prolonged selection processes. As a contrast, multilateral collaborations, such as EUREKA and EUROSTARS, are often brought forward as examples of regulations more adapted to the reality of targeted group of SMEs. Preferably a future Community Innovation Policy should include the possibility to top-up successful multinational or national programmes as was done in the case of EUROSTARS. Read more here

For the first time the European research initiative EUREKA will be represented with its own stand at the trade fair Research & Technology at the Hall 2 of the HANNOVER MESSE 2010 (19-23 April). This presentation underlines the strategic importance of the Innovations Market for Research and Development.

As the Luuk Borg, Director of EUREKA’s ESE Office said, EUREKA’s participation emphasizes its contribution as a central European platform with respect to the international networking of industrial research, technological progress and innovation. HANNOVER MESSE affords an ideal setting due to its huge high-tech diversity and international scope, not least the exhibitors and visitors from numerous countries. No other single event offers us such a convincing combination of important factors – Hannover is uniquely suited as a showcase for our initiative.

EUREKA network will be represented by a number of top flight speakers, experts and projects. A matchmaking event involving a number of EUREKA experts sharing their experience will also take place at the EUREKA stand during the whole duration of the fair. Read more here!

This first Norwegian-French-British 4-year project, labeled by EUROGIA+ and being funded by both Gassnova and French DGCIS cumulated more than 11 Million Euros.  This is a major success which was all done within 9 months. If the Hurum site is found to be suitable, the project will go forward into its implementation phase (2010 – 2013) and the site could become a green laboratory next year: a unique tool for scientists who are developing the technology needed for secure underground storage of captured CO₂.

The Hurum project is part of the efforts of scientists, industry and the authorities in several countries to develop technology capable of capturing and storing the greenhouse gas CO₂ emitted by coal- and gas-fuelled power stations and by other industrial plants. Efficient CO₂ capture and its subsequent underground storage in porous rocks is regarded as one of a number of important measures that need to be taken to combat global warming. In comparison with the size of such storage sites, only extremely modest amounts of CO₂ will be pumped into the ground beneath Hurum. The idea is to test current methods for monitoring how the CO₂ behaves deep below the surface at different storage sites, and thereby contribute to the development of regulations and procedures for CO₂ storage monitoring.

With SINTEF acting as project manager, Norwegian, French and British scientists from both academia and industry are launching a geological pilot study that will determine whether the Hurum site is suitable for experiments of this sort, and whether implementing the plans for a laboratory is justifiable in environmental and safety terms. According to SINTEF, no other field laboratory anywhere in the world will simultaneously test so many monitoring methods at such depths as here.

The project at Hurum has been successfully submitted to EUROGIA+, the R&D programme for Low Carbon Energy Technologies sitting within the intergovernmental EUREKA procedure

Pilot studies have been carried out at several other locations, but Svelvik Ridge has emerged as the most suitable site in Norway for testing for CO₂ monitoring systems.

MaxCaps Research Project has been launched as a project within the European Medea+ (a EUREKA cluster) research programme. The research project aims at developing methods to integrate capacitors on silicon chips, thereby cutting the number of discrete capacitors at present mounted on printed circuit boards (PCB) by nearly 30 per cent.

Designers can, by integrating capacitors on to the silicon die, omit discrete capacitors, thus cutting the number of components and soldered connections. This helps them shrink PCB sizes and also improve the reliability.

It is a generally known fact that soldered connections are one of the most common causes of defects. To integrate the capacitors, the research group will search for alternatives to the silicon-dioxide and silicon-nitride materials used at present as dielectrics in the production of semiconductors.

The MaxCaps Research Project aims at developing new isolating materials with a dielectric constant of 50 and above. The production processes needed to handle these materials are also being researched. Most major semiconductor manufacturers of Europe are participating in the project. They include: Chipmakers NXP and STMicroelectronics and Analog Devices, equipment vendors ASMI and Aixtron, in addition to research institutes CEA-LETI and IMEC as well as many universities.

Infineon is coordinating the activities of the research project. The European Union (EU) is partially funding the MaxCaps Research Project, with €2.75 million (around $ 4 million). The results of the project are expected in 2011.

This year’s Eurostars Funding Agencies Conference took place on Thursday 1 October in Brussels. Over 55 participants representing many of the Eurostars participating countries, funding agencies and representatives from the European Commission were present. Future cooperation of funding agencies, synchronisation and further involvement at a regional level were the main topics on the agenda.

Luuk Borg, who heads the EUREKA Secretariat (ESE) and responsible for the Eurostars Programme, opened the conference. “This is the beginning of a long and fruitful way of collaboration between member states and funding agencies,” he said, adding that funding agencies are greatly involved in EUREKA activities. The aim of the conference was to convince, challenge and bring the right questions to the participants in order to make the Eurostars Programme even better. “The Eurostars Programme works well and has attracted a number of other initiatives like ERA-Net, Cornet and EraSME,” Borg added in his conclusion of the first session.

Michel Vanavermaete, IT and Projects manager (ESE), with Peter Chisnall, Eurostars Scientific and Technical Advisor spoke of the technical aspects and the funding availability of Eurostars. They explained the different stages of the evaluation process as well as the application procedures. The process, set-up and management structure of the Programme were further explained.

David Garlot, EUREKA’s R&D and Trends Analyst, presented the results of the previous Eurostars Programme application cut-offs and the most important trends. Most interesting to note is that 80% of applicants are R&D-performing SMEs, suggesting that Eurostars is reaching its main target. The main technological areas, representing more than 80% of applications come from ICT, biotechnology and industrial technologies.

Veerle Notaert, Administration and Chair Support manager (ESE), explained the bilateral agreements between ESE and the national funding agencies and their legal background.

The afternoon session of the conference was dedicated to a lively debate on ‘The potential regional dimension of the Eurostars Programme’ and ‘Future Cooperation of the National Funding Bodies within Eurostars’.

Advantages and disadvantages of developing the regional dimension of Eurostars; increasing Eurostars funding through the regions or through the increase of national committed budget; and where the Eurostars programme is doing well in terms of synchronisation were some of the questions answered by members of the panel.

The fourth Eurostars Programme application cut-off date is Thursday 25th February 2010.