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physicsworld.com
Funding
Europe backs graphene research with €1bn boost
A project to commercialize graphene
has been awarded 71bn over
a 10-year period by the European
Commission (EC). Led by theoretical
physicist Jari Kinaret of Chalmers
University of Technology in
Sweden, the graphene project beat
off four other bids for one of two
huge new 71bn Future and Emerging
Technologies awards – the other
winning project being on brain
research. The graphene project
involves 126 academic and industrial
research groups from 17 EU member
states and will consist of 15 “packages”,
each representing a different
application area of graphene and led
by a different expert.
Half of the funding will come from
the EC’s Horizon 2020 programme,
which promotes research and innovation
in the EU, with the other
half coming from national budgets
or industry. The graphene project
was awarded the money after gaining
wide support – particularly from
Neelie Kroes, the EU commissioner
for digital agenda. She says the project
will help create a European “graphene
valley” that will connect the
academic and industrial consortium.
Only the first 30 months of the pro-
Thin future
The 10-year
graphene project will
lead to the
development of new
techniques for the
fabrication of
graphene
nanodevices as well
as the integration of
graphene-based
opto-electronic
devices.
gramme have detailed goals at the
moment. These include the development
of different techniques for
making graphene nanodevices, the
design of a graphene-based receiver
unit for radio signal processing and
the integration of a graphene-based
opto-electronic and nano-photonic
device. However, Kinaret is not
concerned about the lack of targets
over the whole of the 10-year project.
“We are doing research, not development,”
says Kinaret, “and a defining
feature of research is uncertainty.”
Kinaret insists, though, that the project
does have a number of detailed
Education
Online-learning provider edX doubles membership
A major digital education initiative
set up by Harvard University and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) has just doubled its number
of university partners and signed
up its first members from outside
the US. The edX programme, which
offers free online learning, is now
joined by universities in Canada,
Australia, the Netherlands and
Switzerland. “We have had an international
student community almost
from the beginning and bringing
these leading international universities
into edX will help us meet the
tremendous demand we are experiencing,”
says edX president Anant
Agarwal from MIT.
edX is a not-for-profit education
programme offering “MOOCs”,
or massive open online courses.
MOOCs differ from conventional
online learning programmes,
being free of charge, offering vast
resources and not usually leading
to any formal credit being awarded
by the providers. Although MOOCs
have existed for several years, the
founders of edX say they are raising
the bar by building an entire opensource
platform that links some of
the world’s leading universities. A
typical edX course consists of “learning
sequences” involving videos
presented by university academics,
along with assessments and online
interactive laboratories.
Harvard and MIT both invested
$30m in edX early last year and were
subsequently joined in the initiative
by the University of California at
Berkeley, the University of Texas,
Wellesley College and Georgetown
University. Now, these six institutions
will be joined by Rice University
(also in the US), McGill and
Toronto universities in Canada, plus
the Australian National University,
Watch and learn
Anant Agarwal,
president of edX, has
given an exclusive
video interview to
Physics World, which
can be viewed online
and in our digital
issue.
News & Analysis
long-term goals, for example in electronics,
optics, energy applications
and composite materials.
Andre Geim from the University
of Manchester, who shared the 2011
Nobel Prize for Physics with his col-
league Konstantin Novoselov for
their work on graphene, says that
with so many potential technologies
that have already been suggested for
graphene, the chances are “sky high”
the project will deliver something.
“Graphene is my best bet for the next
big technological breakthrough,”
says Geim. “Nevertheless, one needs
to remember that it takes typically
40 years for a new material to move
from academia to consumer shelves.
Graphene progresses unbelievably
fast, having reached industrial labs
already, but our expectation should
remain realistic.”
News of the 71bn European award
for graphene came just weeks after
a report by the intellectual-property
consultancy CambridgeIP noted that
the US and Asia currently hold the
lion’s share of graphene patents, with
Korean electronics giant Samsung
alone filing more than 400.
Senne Starckx
Mol, Belgium
Delft University of Technology in
the Netherlands, and the École Polytechnique
Fédérale de Lausanne in
Switzerland. “Each of these schools
was carefully selected for the distinct
expertise and regional influence
they bring to our growing family of
edX institutions,” says Agarwal.
All six current edX members
launched courses in 2012 and have
new courses starting this spring.
Among the new batch is a course
on electricity and magnetism taught
by Walter Lewin, an MIT physicist
who already has a strong online following
through earlier recorded
lectures. Other existing edX courses
include those on quantum mechanics
and computing taught by Berkeley
academic Umesh Vazirani,
and on solid-state chemistry by
MIT human-genome pioneer Eric
Lander. According to edX spokesperson
Dan O’Connell, Delft has
already indicated that it will be begin
offering edX courses from autumn,
including courses on solar energy
and space engineering.
James Dacey
Physics World March 2013 9
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