August 2004 - European Commission - Europa

Feature
of intelligent manufacturing systems, biosensors,
and nanoelectronics. There is also
ground for action in conjunction with Thematic
Priority 6 on sustainable development,
global change and ecosystems.
As the latest action in the implementation
of the EU-US Science and Technology
Agreement (see also page 15), the EU and
the US National Science Foundation
(NSF) issued a coordinated call in June
2004 for joint activities in computational
materials research.
This call for Specific Targeted Research
Projects (STREPs) has a nominal EU
budget of €6 million and addresses
properties and phenomena that span
multiple time and length scales and require
multiscale modelling, including the related
model validation, to compute the essential
science. There should be a balanced
participation of partners from Europe and
the USA.
A Communication (2) published on 10 February
2003 highlights three imperatives for the
expanded Community: sustainable growth; citizenship,
freedom, security and justice; and
making the EU a global partner. And, in its
June 2004 strategy document (3) , the Commission
proposed doubling EU research funding to an
average of €10 billion a year in the Seventh
Framework Programme (FP7) to fully exploit
‘European added value’.
The six major objectives of such EU action
should be to:
1. Create European centres of excellence by
means of collaboration between laboratories;
2. Launch technological initiatives on an EU
scale in promising industrial sectors by
creating joint undertakings;
3. Boost the creativity of basic research by means
of competition between individual teams at
European level;
4. Make Europe more attractive to the best
researchers by increasing support for them;
12 # European Industrial Research - AUGUST 2004
> Joint EU-US materials workshop
BEYOND FP6
As part of the preparation for the joint call between the EU and the US National Science
Foundation (NSF), the NSF Division of Materials Research and the European Commission
organised a joint workshop (1) in San Francisco in April 2004 to explore and assess current
opportunities in computational materials science. This event examined new methods for
understanding and predicting materials properties. Areas considered included crystal
growth, surface adsorption, structural defects such as lattice mismatch and grain
boundaries, microstructural evolution, crack formation and propagation, melting and
diffusion, spintronics, molecular and nanoelectronics, and quantum dots.
Following presentations from 19 European and 23 US contributors, parallel sessions
examined methods first by material types and then by scale. Each discussion group
identified fundamental scientific issues at each scale, considered to be highly appropriate
for EU-US collaboration.
Overall, participants welcomed the EU-NSF collaborative programme as promoting
interdisciplinary collaboration between European and US researchers to drive scientific
discoveries through the application of materials modelling to new and emerging areas of
chemistry, physics, material science and materials engineering. This support will enable
the development of new capabilities to integrate appropriate modelling approaches to
describe material phenomena involving different length and time scales.
(1) National Science Foundation/European Commission Workshop: Methods in Computational Materials Science,
San Francisco, 15 & 16 April 2004
The European Commission is proposing an increased RTD budget for the period 2007 to 2013, and
calling for higher Member State contributions to support research and innovation at the EU level.
5. Develop research infrastructures of European
interest based on the example of the trans-
European networks; and
6. Strengthen coordination between national
research programmes.
Discussions are currently under way regarding
the creation of various broad based technology
platforms bringing together all relevant stakeholders
to develop a long-term European vision
for the development and deployment of key
areas of science and technology. Their objective
is to formulate a strategic research agenda and
action plans that will convert vision into real
actions. Close co-operation is envisaged with
national and European policy-makers in implementing
these plans. They will derive recommendations
for FP7 and mobilise private
resources through the formation of public-private
partnerships.
“The enlargement of Europe calls for better
integration of research actors and activities in the
field of NMP. Within the European Research
Area, synergies between the various research
teams working in industrial technologies in all
Member States and associated countries can be
maximised – and this is a trend that must be
encouraged to the full,” comments José-Lorenzo
Vallés. “The academic institutes of the new
Member States are becoming increasingly
involved; it is to be hoped that, following accession,
their industries will also be in a position to
play a greater part. Strengthening our contacts
with researchers throughout the rest of the
world is also crucial in tackling problems that are
not constrained by the frontiers of Europe.”
What is certain is that, as in every era since the
Stone Age, state-of-the-art materials will play a
decisive part in shaping the future. Given the
need to conserve resources and protect the
environment for future generations, that means
making more and more from less and less.
(2) Building our common future: Policy challenges and budgetary
means of the enlarged union 2007-2013; COM(2004) 101 final
(3) Science and technology, the key to Europe’s future - Guidelines
for future European Union policy to support research; COM(2004)
353 final