Join the OASIS Open Call webinar on 16th July

The OASIS Open Innovation Test Bed has launched an Open Call for Democases providing support to companies in the development of lightweight multifunctional products based on aluminium and polymer composites.

Join our webmeeting on 16 July 2020, 1 p.m. CEST.

During this webmeeting, you will learn why and how to apply to this unique opportunity to benefit from the European Commission’s support through the OASIS project.

This webmeeting will provide you information about:

the Horizon 2020 project OASIS
the open call for companies and institutions
the technologies that you can access through the pilot-lines
the business services provided by OASIS to boost your innovation
showcases already implemented to give you an impression of what can be achieved on the technological side with the support of the OASIS consortium.

You can register for the event here – LINK

OASIS Open Call_webinar-1440x501.png

OASIS Open Call has been launched!

The OASIS Open Innovation Test Bed has launched an Open Call for Democases with the objective of providing support to institutions in the development of lightweight multifunctional products based on aluminium and polymer composites. Successful applicants to the OASIS Open Call will get free access to an ecosystem of 12 nanotechnology manufacturing pilot lines, providing nanomaterials, nano-intermediates, nano-enabled products and associated services. The selected applicants will be provided with customized support through a complete set of services integrating technical and business expertise which will enable them to build up sustainable business cases. If interested, please check OASIS’ website, browse through its Catalogue of services, read the conditions of the Call, and eventually apply with your Democase here – LINK.

The Call’s first cut-off date, after which proposals will be evaluated and selected for support, is on 31st January 2021. We strongly encourage all potential applicants to check the feasibility of their ideas prior to submitting their proposals. Please do so by contacting the HelpDesk at helpdesk@project-oasis.eu or by calling this number +420 226 217 422.

Marketplace: Virtual Catalogue for Flexible and Wearable Electronics is Live!

The Digital Innovation Hub – SmartEEs has built a digital platform, with catalog showcasing a globally unique and comprehensive list of validated Flexible and Wearable Electronics (FWE) products, prototypes and technical services. Particularly in these days, it is essential to build more agile and European value chains and to integrate already existing products or modules for fast market entry.

Through the catalog, each registered visitor can discover available technology and its use in various application fields. The aim of the catalog is to enable business innovation partnerships for developing novel products or services based on Flexible and Wearable Electronics. Last but not least, the registered offering may be involved in the experiments selected and co-financed by SmartEEs. This is the opportunity for the promotion of your FWE products, prototypes and services!

We invite you to register your organization and to share your capabilities with the SmartEEs community.
Register now by following these steps:
1.         Visit: https://ecosystem.smartees2.eu/
2.         Register in: Organization registry
3.         Wait for confirmation (max 48 hours)
4.         Go to the Marketplace and start adding New Items

Currently, the marketplace offers innovating companies the possibility to explore more than 80 innovative offerings, based on flexible electronics. These innovative technologies correspond to the state-of-the-art applications in Organic Photovoltaics, Flexible Displays, OLED Lighting, Electronics & Components and Integrated Smart Systems. Moreover, the Marketplace offers companies the possibility to consult different products by application domain. Available domains comprise applications for automotive, buildings, consumer electronics, energy, lighting, logistics, medical & pharmaceutical, packaging, graphic arts and textile sectors. The SmartEEs Marketplace is a place to innovate the business of SMEs, Mid-caps and Large companies while scouting for new business opportunities with flexible electronics technologies and to connect supply (ready to integrate products, prototypes, services) & demand (designers, integrators, solution providers, vendors), and to facilitate the promotion of innovative products.

See you in the marketplace where we display the best examples of what is possible with Flexible and Wearable Electronics Technologies.

Medical Devices Development, As Fast As Light?

Perhaps Medical Devices cannot be on the market as fast as light, but we can try to accelerate the process. That is what MedPhab will try to do, being the first European Pilot Line of photonics-based medical devices. Photonics21 published a Press Release about MedPhab on June 22, which highlights the importance in finding better, faster and more reliable ways of developing medical devices.

Medical devices development process takes normally long time from concept to clinical trials, and for instance to be introduced in the market. This process is not only slow but also significantly expensive. MedPhab aims to cut the costs involved in research and development of medical devices and more specifically diagnostic devices using photonics. MedPhab’s aim is to create easy access for European SMEs, researchers and businesses to a unified infrastructure dedicated to manufacturing, testing, validation and up-scaling of new photonics technologies that are used for medical diagnostics. Photonics being the field of physics that studies, uses and manipulates light is capable of helping the doctors and clinicians to understand diseases with greater specificity and sensitivity without being invasive. Helping its clients to implement cutting-edge photonics technologies into their medical diagnostics products, MedPhab believes it will significantly improve health and patient care. Through the Use Case Validation Program, MedPhab will ensure that the prototypes adhere to the highest medical standards, MedPhab selects companies that are validated with ISO13485 standardised manufacturing. (ISO13485 is the standard for a Quality Management System for the design and manufacture of Medical Devices). Use-case companies will cover both in-vivo and in-vitro domains in order to cover three application areas: hospital use, home care devices and equipment for molecular diagnostics. Moreover, the pilot line focuses on technologies such as Fibre optics, Microfluidics, Surface functionalisation, Instrumentation, Optoelectronic integration, Custom medical patches, Miniaturisation for micromodules and wearables. Medical devices development cannot be as fast as light but MedPhab is lightning a faster path. Read the full press release on MedPhab’s website or Photonics21 website.

Findings of the General Data Protection Regulation Review

The EC published an evaluation report on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The General Data Protection Regulation is a single set of rules of EU law on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.

The report shows the GDPR has met most of its objectives, in particular by offering citizens a strong set of enforceable rights and by creating a new European system of governance and enforcement. The GDPR proved to be flexible to support digital solutions in unforeseen circumstances such as the Covid-19 crisis. It also finds that businesses are developing a compliance culture and increasingly use strong data protection as a competitive advantage. Read the full report from the EC on the key findings of the GDPR review HERE.

The Key Measures Needed to Achieve the European Green Deal

Fighting climate change and making Europe climate-neutral by 2050 is one of the main priorities of the European Commission. In support of this priority, the Commission is reinforcing Green Deal-related research and innovation with this dedicated call for proposals under the current research and innovation programme – Horizon 2020.

The European Green Deal is our roadmap for making the EU’s economy sustainable and the first climate-neutral continent. Over 35% of Horizon Europe spending will contribute to climate objectives therefore the Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG R&I) invites the research and industrial stakeholders, including RTOs to participate in the recently published broader stakeholder consultation on the Renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy. The Renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy aims to provide the policy tools to ensure the financial system genuinely supports the transition of the industry towards sustainability in a context of recovery. The strategy is an integral part of the European Green Deal and will contribute to the objectives of the European Green Deal Investment Plan, in particular to create an enabling framework for private investors and the public sector to facilitate sustainable investments.

Read initial roadmap of the key policies and measures needed to achieve the European Green Deal here and take part in stakeholder consultation on the Renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy by providing your feedback through the online questionnaire by 15 July 2020.

AMIRES is One of the EU Datathon Finalists

AMIRES was selected as one of the 12 finalists out of 121 proposals for EU Datathon. EU Datathon is an annual open data competition organized by the Publications Office of the EU since 2017. The main goal is to stimulate innovation and transform the interaction between citizens and the EU administration. Our idea proceeded to compete in the finals during the European Week of Regions and Cities (12-15 October 2020) in Brussels.
There are four categories according to the challenge to be addressed:

A European Green Deal (Challenge 1),
An economy that works for people (Challenge 2),
A new push for European democracy (Challenge 3)
and a Europe fit for the digital age (Challenge 4).

AMIRES team has been tackled challenge number 2- An economy that works for people. As a result, our team consists of John Kennedy Mwangi, Rudolf Fryček, Roman Pašek and Lenka Bajarova will develop new application called EU4Region. EU4Region is a visualisation platform that maps the state of cohesiveness and inclusion of EU regions through funding. It seeks to explore the absorption capacity of EU funding and help identify unknown patterns, causal relations and changes resulting from injection of EU funds in various regions. The AMIRES team’s ambition for this platform is to facilitate evidence-based policy-making by identifying regions that are lagging behind and encourage their participation in future funding programmes.

We are grateful to be part of creating new value for citizens through innovation and promoting the use of open data. Good luck to all teams!
Read more information about EU datathon.

AMIRES looking for new team member!

We are proud of the work we do, and our success is primarily the result of our passionate team of dedicated people. To support our growth, we are looking for highly motivated people to join our team in Prague for a position of Project Manager of European R&D&I projects.

If you are interested in new technologies, great at communication, familiar with European R&D&I funding, have analytical mind set and organizational skills and like challenges, then our job proposal is for you. Read HERE for more.

Virus can connect people!

EU hackaton ‘EU vs Virus’ took place on 24-26 April, 2020, in which 600 volunteers and Commission officers from seven departments of the Commission and lead by the European Innovation Council teamed up for this initiative.
The interaction during these two intense days resulted in 2164 multi-disciplinary teams, from different countries and brought innovative ideas and solutions to COVID19 pandemics in different subjects. The winners in topics of health and Life, Business Continuity, Social & Political Cohesion, Remote Working & Education and Digital Finance received 3000 -5000 Euros that were sponsored by different companies, such as Caixa Bank Payments and Consumer, Huawei, AXWAY, EY. They were additionally invited to participate in the Matchathon that was held from 22 to 25 May on the new EIC COVID Platform. This second event enabled match-making with end-users, and provided access to other funding opportunities from across the EU. The closing ceremony occurred on June 2, 2020 as the “Accomplishment day”. More information HERE

Substantial reduction of plastic waste in the world: FlexFunction2Sustain project

FlexFunction2Sustain – Open Innovation Test Bed to boost innovations for sustainable plastic and paper products to reach the market faster

European (EU) H2020 funded FlexFunction2Sustain project, officially started on 1st April, 2020, is set to establish an Open Innovation Test Bed for nano-functionalisation technologies that enables sustainable and smart plastics and paper based products. AMIRES, together with eighteen consortium members, coordinated by Fraunhofer-FEP , unify their competencies, business development expertise and technical infrastructure to provide users an easy access to holistic innovation boosting services through a Single Entry Point. The ecosystem aims at helping companies to drastically reduce the time and cost to progress through the innovation chain from an idea to a successful product in the market.

Read the Press Release announcing the launch of the FlexFunction2Sustain project.

Key Enablers of the Progress in Biosensor

AMIRES participated in next interactive EPIC Technology Meeting on Biosensors, occured on 11 May 2020 and here are some of the highlights.

One of the key topics discussed was development of various Point-of-care (POC) tests for timely and reliable detection of COVID-19. Laura Lechuga, the Head of the Nanobiosensors & Bioanalytical Applications at ICN2 presented a solution, which is cheaper POC nanophotonics-based version of the Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests (RT-PCR) laboratory testing. While establishing a manufacturing process of the nanophotonic-based biosensor, some of the highlighted challenges which are quite common for development of biosensors are: packaging and biofunctionalization. As demonstrated by presentations of industrial partners (Surfix, PIXAPP, LIGENTEC), Europe’s manufacturing base is ready to address such challenge. One of the recent examples of strengthened manufacturing capability of Europe is the MedPhab H2020 funded initiative, which sets up Europe’s first manufacturing pilot line for photonics-based medical diagnostic devices and instruments to accelerate their development and commercialization.

From the technologies, integrated photonics was presented as a key enabler of the progress in biosensor research and development. Surface plasmon resonance imaging (NESPRI) was praised as a reliable sensing technology method. It has been successfully applied also in ULTRAPLACAD project, which recently developed an ULTRAsensitive PLAsmonic device for early Cancer Diagnosis.

For more information on the agenda and presentations click HERE

Breakthrough Advancements in Organic Large Area Electronics

Breakthrough advancements in Organic Large Area Electronics (OLAE) are ahead of us thanks to the RoLA-FLEX project that has officially kicked-off on 1st May 2020. Although its Kick-off meeting needed to be held remotely via a teleconference (on 6th May), the consortium partners managed to have a fruitful meeting and discuss the plan for the project’s first year.

RoLA–FLEX is an industry driven project led by National Technical University of Athens, which provides innovative solutions to the existing OLAE challenges associated with performance and lifetime, through:

(a) the fabrication and upscaling of organic semiconductors with high charge mobilities (up to 10 cm2/Vs) and high power conversion efficiencies (16% in OPV cell and 12% in OPV module);
(b) the development of metal oxides for charge carrier selective contacts and metal nanoinks for highly conductive micropatterns with increased environmental stability;
(c) the seamless incorporation of high speed laser digital processing in Roll-2-Roll Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) module fabrication and photolithography based Organic Thin Film Transistor (OTFT) manufacturing and
(d) the demonstration of two TRL5+ OLAE prototypes enabled by the developed materials and innovative processes:

A smart energy platform for IoT devices powered by ITO-free and flexible OPVs operating at low indoor light conditions.
A new generation of bezel-less and fully bendable smart watches integrating FHD, ultra-bright OLCD/OTFT displays.

RoLA-FLEX will advance all the aforementioned technologies to at least TRL5 within its timeframe. RoLA-FLEX will create an opportunity for a yearly increase in revenues of almost €400 M only 6 years after its end, accompanied by hundreds of new jobs. A timely investment in the early days of these new markets can ensure significant market share for the SMEs and Industries involved and greatly boost EU’s competitiveness globally.

MedPhab on EPIC webinar “In vivo imaging”

On May 4^th, 2020 online meeting about “In-vivo imaging” was organized by EPIC who brought up together start-ups, SMEs and research centres, experts in in vivo imaging. In vivo imaging is the visualization of living organisms for research or diagnostic purposes, in these talks the living organisms are the humans.

Ten speakers presented their expertise, interest and role in this topic with application in medical sector. Jussi Hiltunen, MedPhab coordinator, introduced the pilot-line to the audience of this meeting. Not only the speakers which presented their current research and development were participating but also the attendants contributed to the discussions. Mariana Pacheco Blanco, from Amires, as MedPhab partner described the role of AMIRES in MedPhab, and how the company portfolio and expertise in proposal preparation and project management could be of interest for the attendants.

The topics that were discussed and presented ranged from applications in different cancers, surgery, ophthalmology, endoscopy, and even remote education for medical students and trainees. Start-of-the-art technologies of imaging, such as optical components, lasers, fibres, optical coherence tomography, were presented. This meeting incubates future collaborations and partnerships for applications in in vivo imaging.
Link to the video event.

THE MANUELA PROJECT HANDBOOK IS OUT!

ORGANTRANS website is up

Join the Global Response

The European Union and its partners are hosting an international pledging conference starting on Monday 4 May 2020. The aim is to raise €7.5bn to develop and deploy effective diagnostics, treatments and a vaccine.

WHO IS INVITED to pledge to help reach the funding target of €7.5 billion:

International organisations,
financial institutions
and private sector companies of all countries

They need to ensure that not only we develop these life-saving tools but that we ensure they are universally available and affordable.
Individuals can show their support by spreading awareness to encourage companies to pitch in.

Fund raising starts on 4 May 2020 – JOIN HERE.
Let’s support European effort to raise funding for developing vaccine and treatments against coronavirus.

The Virus Knows No Borders

The impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the most fragile countries, migrants and the most vulnerable people is likely to be dramatic. “The virus knows no borders. This global challenge needs strong international cooperation.“ said The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

This means all EU institutions and Member States have to work together as a real Team Europe to provide the effective contribution to the global response. Team Europe approach, aimed at saving lives by providing quick and targeted support to EU partners facing pandemic. It combines resources from the EU, its Member States and financial institutions, in particular the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. From existing external action resources, the EU is mobilising more than €15.6 billion, to:

1. tackle immediate needs, both humanitarian and in the health care sector- €502 million.
2. strengthen the health, water and sanitation systems of partner countries, and support research- €2.8 billion
3. address the economic and social consequences- €12.28 billion

The distribution logic follows the needs of our partner countries but will also take into account the added value, efficiency and complementarity of EU resources, with what other European and non-European stakeholders are doing. The EU’s contribution to the emergency humanitarian response will be allocated on the basis of needs on the ground and will prioritize the most vulnerable groups. The distribution of EU resources should not be isolated from what EU Member States will contribute to address the short to medium and long-term impact of the crisis in our partner countries and regions.

The EU will promote a coordinated multilateral response, in partnership with the United Nations, International Financial Institutions, as well as the G7 and the G20.

Download the factsheet on concrete examples of EU support in partner countries

Source:
ttps://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_604
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_20_606
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/fs_20_607

ORGANTRANS in video lecture on Regenerative Hepatology

Collaborative Work on COVID19 Research

InSCOPE finishes but its Pilot Line continues

After 39 months of implementation, InSCOPE project has come to an end. Back in January 2017, 11 partners from 8 European countries joined their forces and knowledge for an ambitious adventure of setting up an InSCOPE Pilot Line for Hybrid TOLAE (H-TOLAE) technologies in the automotive, healthcare, smart packaging and building sectors, and validating its services by 4 Showcases and 15 development cases.

It has been an amazing experience and a true example of successful collaboration across different cultures and borders. A perfect match between technical (TNO, CPI, CEA, VTT, IMEC, Walter Pack / Symbose) and industrial partners (Signify, Bosch, KONE and GSK) backed up by EU project management experts (AMIRES) made it possible to set up the Pilot line and achieve some remarkable results in line with the undertaken commitments with the European Commission.

If you are interested to learn more about our major results with the lighting wall, haptic dashboard, interactive elevator or smart blisters please check here. In addition, you can request here your copy of the InSCOPE Handbook with all relevant information about the project and its Pilot Line.

Event though the InSCOPE project ended, its Pilot Line will continue operating under different settings, one of which is a newly awarded H2020 project called SmartEEs2. Interested SMEs and Mid-caps can apply to the Call for Application Experiments with a topic Support to manufacturing of FWE based end-products including upscaling, and the selected companies will be offered a service by the Pilot Line. All those companies who wish to avoid the application process and just discuss independent collaboration opportunities can simply contact our coordinator Corne Rentrop at corne.rentrop@tno.nl .

A big thank you to all our partners and good luck to all with the new adventures!

SmartEEs2 to support 2 proposals fighting against Covid-19

MedPhab website officially has launched!

MedPhab website has officially launched!!! Through this open channel, public can learn about MedPhab, and its advantages as the first European pilot line for photonic-based medical devices. Potential customers have an overview of the MedPhab’s capabilities and expertise of its offering in manufacture, development and upscaling of photonics-based medical products. MedPhab partners help in developing new concepts and a sustainable access to its operations. The technology validation of pilot production line focuses on three application areas: hospital use, home care devices and equipment for molecular diagnostics. External users will be able to adopt MedPhab technologies through the Demo-Case Open Calls programme, which will be open from June 30, 2021, so stay tuned! Moreover, this program demonstrates the pilot line services and validates the open access business model to accelerate the product development. If further questions remain, info@medphab.eu email is available, or an online Contact form exists.

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Joining SmartEEs Community

Over 30 participants joined the Workshop for Third Party Suppliers offering technology services in the field of flexible & wearable electronics. Originally planned face-to-face workshop at LOPEC 2020 was organized as an online event on 24th March 2020 through the Zoom video conferencing platform provided by AMIRES. SmartEEs2 partners CEA, FhG and AMIRES were happy to present to the invited companies the SmartEEs Community and benefits of becoming it member. Companies had the opportunity to lean more about the project, Financial Support to Third Parties, (FSTP) and evaluation and assignment process of the selected application experiments. Fruitful question and answer session concluded the event with an invitation to companies to stay tuned for further steps in the process of joining the SmartEEs Community.

For more information about the event and presentations, please check the links below:

Recording of the workshop

Presentations

Success Stories– An Effective Impact of Coaching

Platinn Coaching, the Western Switzerland Innovation Platform, fosters the innovation capabilities and competitiveness of start-ups and SMEs. Amires’s CEO Rudolf Fryček, is a Platinn cooperation coach and since 2011 he has been helping SMEs to reach their milestones.
Lately, two SMEs- regenHU and Daphne experienced an effective impact of the coaching that enabled them to complete the development and testing of its system and put new innovative products on the market. The coaching was primarily focused on the evaluation of European public funding opportunities and the establishment of partnerships in order to develop new products. Both cases succeeded to get funding from the framework of Horizon 2020, the EU financial tool for innovation.

The success stories belong to regenHU and Daphne that have done a huge step towards:

Regenerative medicine – by replacing diseased tissue with healthy, artificially produced tissue
Decreasing maritime pollution– by developing a system to purify exhaust thanks to nanotechnology which eliminates up to 99.3% of sulfur oxides and 85% of nitrogen oxides.

regenHU has dedicated its engineering skills to cutting-edge 3D bioprinting solutions, allowing the artificial creation of biological tissues. regenHU develops both software and instruments. Their printers biofacture “in vitro” models to be able to test new products or develop human tissues for regenerative medicine.

Amires CEO, Rudolf Fryček helped regenHu to set up the search for partners and the preparation of the project proposal. regenHU is now part of the Horizon 2020 European funded project Organtrans aims to develop a disruptive solution that enables the 3D printing of tissue-engineered constructs.

Daphne sells Nanotechnology-based exhaust, catalyst-free, dry scrubber (air pollution reduction technology), which allow cargo ships to comply with the International Maritime Organization regulations on the emissions, while still using Heavy Fuel Oil, which come into effect in 2020. Shipowners around the world will now have to run their ships on fuel containing 0.5% sulfur compared to 3.5% so far. The company has developed a system to purify exhaust gases, called SulPure, this filtration works thanks to nanotechnology which eliminates up to 99.3% of sulfur oxides and 85% of nitrogen oxides. At the end of the process, the exhaust gases are converted into solid particles which can then be recovered to be destroyed or possibly used as fertilizer.

Daphne Technology received 2.5 million euros in European grants in the framework of Horizon 2020. With this latest boost, Daphne Technology will be able to complete the development and testing of its system by the end of the year. Dr. Mario Michal, Founder and Chief Executive of Daphne said: “Thanks to Rudolf Fryček experience, we were able to understand the European subsidy system. There are a lot of scholarships and grants, but they all operate according to specific rules. Rudolf helped us identify the programs we could apply for, and then formalize our proposal for Horizon 2020 EIC Accelerator. He is truly an expert in his field.”
Horizon 2020, the EU financial tool for innovation is indeed a very useful fund contribution to SMEs to do applied research and therefore to be able to put new innovative products on the market later.

SmartEEs2 Call for integration of flexible and wearable electronics technologies is now open!

SmartEEs2 is an original European acceleration program dedicated to helping innovative companies digitise their businesses thanks to flexible and wearable electronics (FWE) testing, experimentation and manufacturing support. How do we do it? We opened a Call for Application Experiments on 6 March 2020 and set 5 cut – off dates between June 2020 and August 2021 for the evaluation and selection of submitted proposals. All interested companies, satisfying the criteria, are invited to submit their application experiment proposals.

All applicants to the SmartEEs2 program will get access to FWE and manufacturing technologies as listed in the Marketplace to integrate advanced features / functions inside new products and / or to make a series of products.

The winners of the Call will benefit from SmartEEs unique ecosystem composed of leading research organizations, a number of innovative technology suppliers, recognized experts in business development and investors.

The selected Innovative Companies will be provided customized support through a complete set of services integrating technical, business, ecosystem expertise which will enable them to build up sustainable business cases.

Check out our Call for Application Experiments (AEs) at www.smartees.eu and do not wait too long to apply! And good luck to all applicants!

Horizon Impact Award 2020

This award is the European Commission’s initiative to recognize and celebrate outstanding projects that have used their results to provide value for society. These projects must have been funded by FP7 and/or Horizon 2020 funding programmes and they must be closed by the time of application.

Coordinators, Project teams take the chance to win The Horizon Impact Award (Five prizes of 10,000 EUR will be awarded) showcase your best practices and achievements from your project for these reasons:

You can inspire beneficiaries of research and innovation funding to maximize the impact of their research.
You will show the wider socio-economic benefits of EU investment in research and innovation.
The Horizon Impact Award will provide the winners with high visibility in the form of public interest and increased media coverage.

Last year winners came up with a new drug for a rare disease, helped prevent child abuse, increased security of browsing the web and protected coastal areas against the effects of climate change.

Closing date for submission is on 2 April 2020. More information on the criteria HERE.

Failed Goal to Boost R&D Spending

An Offer for the US to Join the Horizon Europe

Discussions on Horizon Europe implementation are progressing – here are some of the important milestones that have been achieved.
A screenshot of a computer

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Besides the 16 EU neighbours already in the existing programme,the Commission is dicussing Horizon membership with six other non-EU countries: Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea. The commission is proposing that non-EU countries, including longstanding partners like Switzerland and Israel, get out of Horizon only as much money as they commit to it, a change from the prior formula that saw some countries ending up with more or less money than they contributed. The draft Horizon legislation, which EU member state officials are due to start discussing on 10 February, also requires that Horizon partners share the same democratic values – a veto to China – and provide reciprocal access for EU researchers in their own national programmes.

However as the commission gets ready for formal Horizon negotiations with non-EU countries, the transatlantic contractual disagreement has grown into a bigger issue.

Constance C. Arvis, director of the US State Department’s Office of Science and Technology expressed “concern” about EU-US cooperation.
“If they (the terms) are finalised in the path that we think they may be, that means that for seven years we are going to have to interact with a structure that is fundamentally not going to incentivise science across the Atlantic. And we think that is a very unnecessary and undesirable outcome,” Arvis said.

In her statement, Arvis said

the budgetary terms are “not an incentive to associate” – the legal term for a country formally joining the programme.
The proposed terms also don’t allow an international associate any oversight. “In other words, we can pay in, but we don’t get to decide how it’s used,”
In addition, the terms would allow the commission “unilaterally to exclude” associated third countries from elements of the programme.

Read the full text Constance C. Arvis, director for science and technology cooperation at the US State Department, delivered Here

More information:here

SmartEEs Community – New Call for Application Experiments opening soon!

Breakthrough in Nanophotonic Devices: POSEIDON

The FET-OPEN project POSEIDON had its kick-off meeting on January, 23-24, 2020 in Aachen, in the facilities of AMO GmbH. POSEIDON is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, which aims at developing a radically new bottom-up approach for integrated light sources for silicon photonics.
“We will tear down the massive costs and complexity barriers of current top-down approaches for fabricating photonic integrated circuits”, says the project coordinator Anna Lena Giesecke from AMO GmbH. “The idea is to integrate light sources directly into the photonic circuits by exploiting the self-assembly of active colloids on chips. In this way, we will be able to realize cheap and yet very powerful optical devices, with a very broad range of applications, from data centers to medical sensors.”
If the range of potential applications is broad, the project target explicitly the usual wavelengths of data-communications, with the goal of realizing cheap and efficient optical switches to drastically improve the energy efficiency of data-centers and network performance. The project itself is extremely exciting from the scientific and the technological point of view, as it requires developing a multi-scale approach to design and control the self-assembly of the colloids with nanometer-scale resolution in all three spatial directions directly on photonic integrated circuit.

The project involves eight partners, which represent the top EU innovation-performers in modelling and simulation, colloid synthesis, hierarchical assembly, development of electrically pumped colloidal light sources and fabrication of photonic integrated circuits. POSEIDON is also endorsed by key innovation players (IBM, Hitachi, Mellanox, Causeway Sensors, Senseair), which are involved in defining the target specifications and impact monitoring of the new technology. More information on the project can be found at https://poseidon-fet.eu/ (full version available in March 2020).

Contact persons:	Coordinator:	Project Manager:
Name	Dr. Anna Lena Giesecke	Kristina Pandek
Organisation	AMO GmbH	AMIRES s.r.o.
Email	giesecke@amo.de	pandek@amires.eu

POSEIDON project has a duration of 48 months. Keep tuned on the upcoming project results!

Simplify your tracking – IOTSU® by Small Data Garden

Watch the video we’ve created together with Small Data Garden within the SmartEEs project to see what kind of solutions it brings to life.

IOTSU Flexi is a flexible, plaster-like node that enables remote monitoring of assets and measurement of various parameters for a wide range of applications. The capability to measure acceleration, orientation, position, temperature and moisture levels makes it perfect for applications ranging from medicine and sport to premium parcel services and cold-chain management. The option to extend this solution with other sensors makes the breadth of use case scenarios practically limitless.

The three-way cooperation between Small Data Garden, VTT as the technology provider and AMIRES providing business support, has proven to be invaluable in creating a market ready technology within a short time frame. Such cases will also be supported within SmartEEs 2 project so stay tuned for news about that as its first Open Call is about to launch in March!

Simplifying The Study of Organs

One day after the end of the kick-off meeting of the EU project, OrganTrans-in which AMIRES is a partner-, speakers from renowned companies and institutions presented the last updates of the state-of-the-art tissue and in vitro disease models technologies during the workshop: “Next Gen Organ-on-chip and Organoids”. AMIRES was represented by the attendance of Dr. Mariana Pacheco Blanco. This insightful set of talks were organized by OrganTrans coordinators, Swiss research and technology organization (CSEM), on Thursday February 6th, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
When stem cells (precursors of cells) are cultured in a miniaturized and simplified way to represent the complexity of the organ 3D structure and microenvironment are called organoids. In order to mimic the conditions of real organs, the use of micro devices (or chips) have been developed, more substantially in the last decade. During the workshop, through different detailed presentations the audience could have an enhanced understanding of the new technologies using organs on-chip and organoids, mainly in the study of disease models.
The speakers presented data on the validation of the newest technologies of organs on chips, such as liver, intestine, brain, lung, neuronal networks, vascular systems, kidney, muscle. These chips are based on microfluidics, deep machine learning and automatized systems, even tissue printing platforms. The use of these technologies is being used for the characterization, imaging, functional analysis and even drug studies of organs-on chip and organoids. Not only research in human samples were presented but also tissues of other species, namely rats and dogs, which allows the methodology to be more robust.
One of the main goals of the application of these miniaturized tools is to be able to implement a more personalized medicine, a “You-on chip” medicine as OrganTrans coordinator Gilles Weder more accurately described it.

Regenerative medicine breakthrough: ORGANTRANS

New European manufacturing capacity for photonics-based medical diagnostics

Photonics is based on combining optics and electronics, and it enables various medical applications from diagnostic devices to instruments for treatment. However, both photonics in itself and its areas of application are fragmented, which poses challenges to equipment manufacturers. Furthermore, the strict regulations within the sector slow down the introduction of new solutions. The orders for the pilot production line are made in a centralised manner and channelled to the manufacturer with the best implementation capability.

The European Commission decided to expand the existing photonics pilot-line offering by funding the establishment of MedPhab pilot-line under Horizon 2020 from 1 January 2020, the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The purpose of MedPhab pilot production line is to accelerate the commercialisation of diagnostic devices and instruments based on photonics, and to reduce the R&D cost. Based on testing the validation of the pilot production line on three application areas: hospital environment, home care devices and equipment for chemical diagnostics. Such project needs the cooperation of a consortium of excellent research institutes and companies that have experience in ISO 13485 standardized manufacturing and/or strong expertise in photonics. The consortium gathered together for two days in Brussels (14 – 15 January 2020), Belgium to discuss the challenges and expectations of the four year work process, demonstrating the importance and potential of MedPhab.

More information about the MedPhab pilot line project launch can be accessed HERE.

Information about the projet and its progress will soon be available on the project website HERE.

A new era for free-form micro-optics

The EU project PHABULOuS (Pilot-line providing highly advanced & robust manufacturing technology for optical free-form μ-structures) has been launched on January 15 and 16, 2020, at CSEM in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

The consortium is unifying Europe’s leading Companies and Research & Technology Organizations (RTOs), through the creation of a self-sustainable pilot line for the design and manufacturing of free-form micro-optical solutions. These solutions will be integrated into high added-value devices, spanning from micro displays for augmented reality, to innovative systems for professional, automotive, and transportation lighting to optical effects for luxury. The PHABULOuS consortium will synchronize its efforts to translate urgent and high-impact industrial needs into industrially relevant predictive software packages, manufacturing tools and processes, characterization methods for quality inspection and integration schemes, all necessary for the successful demonstration of this technology in pre-commercial production runs.

Additional information on the pilot line can be found here.

Microoptics is … PHABULOuS!

Optical microtechnology is a booming field in different markets such as industrial, medical, automotive, consumer and mobile, and so there is no surprise that EPIC Meeting on Wafer Level Optics, hosted by SUSS MicroOptics in Neuchatel (Switzerland) brought together large number of companies and stakeholders covering the supply chain including end-users, fabrication techniques, materials and metrology. This meeting allowed the key players in wafer level microoptics to discuss the benefits and motivation of standards and potential collaborations to reinforce the industry and reduce fragmentation. Different applications were discussed such as CMOS image sensors, automotive, lighting, AR/VR headsets, datacom, consumer electronics etc.
This event provided a brilliant opportunity to introduce for the first time PHABULOµS pilot line for optical free-form micro-structures that will be developed and set-up during the H2020 project PHABULOµS starting from January 2020. The presentation was held by the project coordinator Rolando Ferrini (CSEM) and can be found here.

Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Partnership

Towards Climateneutral Continent

The High-Tech Horizon Prize

BREXIT and UK’s participation in Horizon 2020

From Flexible Electronics Projects to Ecosystem

Over 40 participants came to Prague on 11th December 2019 to take part in the Workshop on APPLICATIONS AND INDUSTRIALISATION WITH FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS. The event was organized in the framework of the InSCOPE and SmartEEs projects with the objective of presenting the InSCOPE project results and informing the public about the opportunities offered by the flexible electronics community.

The workshop was opened by Rudolf Frycek, CEO of AMIRES, and Corne Rentrop, the coordinator of the InSCOPE project. During the first session, participants were able to hear more about the four partners of the InSCOPE project – Bosch, Signify, KONE and GSK – and their experiences and results obtained during the 3-year project implementation. Matthias Mahlich, Peter Bancken, Rasmus Lonnqvist and Panagiota Tsapuornioti gave some interesting insights into the printed electronics applications in automotive, smart buildings and medical packages.

The second session was dedicated to examples of flexible electronics in the health, packaging/logistics and building sectors, which were realized through a development case of the Dutch company UNITRON supported by the InSCOPE project as presented by Pieter de Wilde, and thought SmartEEs application experiments of innovative companies – Small Data Garden, Esyst and 3DMA which were represented by Timo Liukko, Jaroslav Sochor, and Robert Fuhrmann respectively. Representatives of large volume manufacturers, Kari Ronka and Marek Ramski from Flexbright and OledWorks shared their developments and ideas with flexible electronics technologies.

Finally, Rudolf Frycek informed the participants about the future opportunities / benefits and EU support for SMEs and Mid-caps.

With the motivation from speakers, a chance to interact with key industry stakeholders, and touch and feel the displayed demonstrators, it was truly an event to remember. Stay tunes for next events and we hope to see you there!

Happy Birthday Smart2Go!

AMIRES looking for new team members!

We are proud of the work we do, and our success is primarily the result of our passionate team of dedicated people. To support our growth, we are looking for highly motivated people to join our team in Prague for a position of Project Manager of European R&D&I projects.

If you are interested in new technologies, great at communication, familiar with European R&D&I funding, have analytical mind set and organizational skills and like challenges, then our job proposal is for you. Read HERE for more.

WORKSHOP ON APPLICATIONS AND INDUSTRIALISATION WITH FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS

We are pleased to announce that in cooperation with Technology Centre, AMIRES is organizing a WORKSHOP ON APPLICATIONS AND INDUSTRIALISATION WITH FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS in Prague, Czech Republic on 11th December from 9.30 a.m. – 14.00 p.m. in the framework of InSCOPE and SmartEEs projects. The workshop targets companies willing to use and integrate flexible electronics in existing or new products. Participants of the workshop will have the opportunity to see examples of new products and prototypes based of flexible, large area and wearable technologies, and to listen to manufacturers and suppliers presenting their scalable technologies and existing business opportunities.

Last but not least, a support for SMEs and midcaps in the form of micro grants will be presented, including prototyping and faster translation to large volume manufacturing.

Detailed information can be found in the Flyer.

We look forward to seeing you in Prague, and please do not forget to register your participation here.

Help to Finalise initiatives under Horizon Europe

The European Commission would like to hear your views on the 12 proposed institutionalised partnerships under Horizon Europe. The proposed partnerships cover the topics such as Innovative Health Initiative, Innovative SMEs or Key Digital Technologies. Draft acts are open for feedback that will be taken into account for finalising an initiative. Let’s increase the impacts of investments and say what matters most. This survey will close on 6 November 2019. Read more HERE

Simpler Rules and Sustainable solution

The European Commission invited all of us to co-design the future research and innovation as part of Horizon Europe – the next research and innovation programme (2021- 2027). The Result is more than 8000 responses received with a strong emphasise on a sustainable solutions and simpler rules- in terms of proposals templates, calls and IT portal. Let’s wait for its strategic planning process towards these findings. Read more Here.

An Expert for Medical Devices

There is a call for expression of interest for an expert of medical devices and in vitro diagnostic devices. Submit your application by 10 November 2019 and join the European Commission’s expert panels with broad spectrum of advisory roles. More information here.

Release of the AMIPLEXUS Version 4.0

Faster, more user friendly and enhanced with new features.
The new AMIPLEXUS version 4.0. was released on October 29th 2019. The improved platform will offer its users new features including:
1. Downloadable interactive reports.
2. Technology-Application-Company matrix feature.
3. Novel analytics based on the NUTS-2 regions and Countries.
4. User friendly search summary for easier and faster navigation.
5. Improved cooperation network visualisation with colour coding and manipulation settings.
6. New datasets Swiss federally funded research projects and ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy in the USA) as well as Updated datasets (H2020, Eurostars, Eureka) as of October 2019.

Subscribe to AMIPLEXUS to visualize and explore R&D and Innovation projects for the following programmes H2020 (25531 projects), Eureka (3905 projects), Eurostars (1750 projects), FP7 (25776 projects), ARPA(738 projects)!.
STAY TUNED!!!

SmartEEs Open Call – 4 proposals selected for the 5th cut-off date

AMIRES, the partner responsible for evaluation process of submitted application experiment proposals for SmartEEs Call for Application Experiments is proud to announce that 4 proposals have been selected to proceed with the contracting phase in the 5th cut-off date. The projects are focused on integrating flexible electronics into advanced new products.

Altogether 21 proposals were received for this cut-off date, all of which were evaluated by the SmartEEs Evaluation Panel. The funding amount for each of the selected projects will be decided during the contracting phase.

If you would like to know more about the 5th cut-off evaluation results, please click here.

This was the last cut-off organized through the SmartEEs, but all interested parties are invited to stay tuned and follow us on social media to learn about new opportunities which will be offered by the SmartEEs Community.

SOLARPACES2019 Takeways for WASCOP, MOSAIC and SOLWARIS

All AMIRES portfolio Concentrated Solar Power related projects (WASCOP, MOSAIC and SOLWARIS), has been presented at Solar Paces 2019 conference that will take place on October 1 -4, 2019, in Daegu-South Korea.

The debate of the conference was mainly run around technologies and ecomonical progress of the as well as the future of the CSP technologies. According to José Luis Martínez Dalmau, president of ESTELA, the strong decline of RES (renewable Energy Company) prices made the policy makers see the costs of the electrical system as the main driver for decarbonization, leaving a bit aside the political commitment to it. In terms of LCoE, RES including CSP, are already competitive against fossil power generation.

At the moment RES gained weight in the energy mix, the lowest LCoE (as sole decisive criterion for technology choices) lost momentum, as it excludes externalities whose costs can be higher than the LCoE itself. Moreover, the need for storage, for network reinforcements, increased curtailments result today in having no longer LCoE, but flexibility in the focus.

By the end of 2018, the current storage capacity of CSP plants exceeded more than 10 times the capacity of all batteries connected to the network worldwide. This mature technology, of great capacity in terms of volume of energy and power of delivery, has demonstrated its reliability. This is a clear opportunity for solar thermal technology with storage. In countries with good DNI, CSP plants with storage will provide the best complement to PV for meeting the demand after sunset and contribute to increasing firmness of the back-up capacity thanks to its manageability.

From PI-SCALE to LYTEUS

In order to evaluate the successful development of the PI-SCALE project and its final results, a review meeting together with representatives of the European Commission took place in Eindhoven, the Netherlands in September 2019.

Within the framework of the PI-SCALE project funded by the European Union under Horizon 2020 programme, the leading European research institutes Holst Centre/TNO, Fraunhofer FEP, VTT, and CPI together with industrial partners Audi, REHAU, Pilkington and EDOL and supported by AMIRES were able to set up the pilot line service for flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) LYTEUS.

LYTEUS is able to supply industrial companies with customized flexible OLED lighting modules and supports the development of new innovative products. The activities of the LYTEUS pilot line continues after the end of the project under the lead of the Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP.

In order to promote PI-SCALE results and to present the services offered by LYTEUS, the consortium invites potential industrial customers to a workshop on November 7, 2019, in Dresden, Germany. During this workshop interested parties can now experience the offer of the LYTEUS pilot line service on site at Fraunhofer FEP and discuss it with the partners. The industrial partners of PI-SCALE will also present their impressive applications and the research partners will inform you in detail about the range of services of LYTEUS. Experts will be then available to discuss ideas.

More information is available at www.pi-scale.eu and www.lyteus.com.

Switch2Save project kicked-off

On October 16 2019, Switch2Save project was officially kicked-off at the meeting of consortium partners in Dresden, Germany. Coordinated by Fraunhofer FEP and with AMIRES participation, the project goal is to improve the availability and affordability of electrochromic (EC) and thermochromic (TC) smart glass technologies.

The Switch2Save consortium includes leading universities, research institutes and industries from six EU countries. Within the next four years, the partners will collectively develop a combination of EC and TC cells – with optimized maximum energy saving potential – based on a switchable total energy transmittance (g-value). They will scale the manufacturing technologies for increased availability and cost effectiveness, assess the performance of the innovative insulating glass units (IGU), and demonstrate the heating and cooling energy saving potential and the lighting comfort in two operational buildings in Greece and Sweden.

The Switch2Save EC and TC modules are based on nanoscaled thin film stacks that are applied to plastic webs or ultra-thin glass films by using large area vacuum and atmospheric pressure deposition techniques. The modules have a specific weight of less than one kg per square meter – much less than even a single glass pane in a window. They are easily integrated into IGUs by a lamination step to allow window and glass façade manufacturing with well-established processes – a key requirement for acceptance of the novel technology by construction companies. The integration of wireless switching and standard interfaces directly into the building automation systems will satisfy the needs of building owners and provide maximum energy saving when in operation.

Switch2Save will demonstrate the potential in two representative buildings – Greece’s second largest hospital in Athens and an operational office building in Uppsala, Sweden. The Switch2Save consortium will replace 50 windows and 200 m² glass façade area with the smart glass solution and will perform a full “before-after” comparison of the energy demand for a one-year cycle in both buildings. The findings will accelerate the widespread implementation of energy smart glass and significantly contribute to the goal of a CO2-neutral building stock in the EU before 2050.

More information will be shortly available at www.switch2save.eu.

IMG_20191016_121405 (002)-1440x1920.jpg

The Purpose of Our New Logo

With 50% success rate, we are one of the best consultancy companies for EU projects, but we were certainly the consultancy with the least visible logo. Even European Commission officials were asking us, why don’t we have a higher visibility in our printed leaflets and roll-ups. So far it followed a simple logic – we wanted to put our clients first, us second. Now, AMIRES is managing R&D projects of a value over 200M€ and has partners in almost all member states. We connect unconnected competencies, build new value chains, construct new networks and ecosystems. AMIRES brings often the missing piece for complex consortia or for business oriented partnerships. This is perfectly represented by our new dynamic logo, featuring missing elements and turquoise colour representing wisdom, trustworthiness, freedom, stability and harmony. All is perfectly fitting our supporting mindset, for our clients, for new proposals and for running projects.

Smart2Go progresses in the flexible miniaturized battery development

Meet InSCOPE project at AIPIA World Congress 2019

AMIRES is hiring!

Deadlines for Horizon 2020 calls

Horizon 2020 offers a variety of funding opportunities for research and innovation activities through calls for proposals that are set out in the Horizon 2020 work programme. Here is the overview of its final round of calls under Horizon 2020 for:

Health Care
SME Instrument
Energy
Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials, Biotechnology, and Advanced Manufacturing and Processing” (NMBP)
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA)
Fast Track to Innovation (FTI)
Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) actions are expected to initiate radically new lines of technology through unexplored collaborations between advanced multidisciplinary science and cutting-edge engineering.

Click here to search calls for proposals and tenders of the European institutions.

Results of SmartEEs support

Co-Design the Future Research

The European Investment Project Portal

Discover How Physicist Vanessa Survived in Amires

We are happy to say that we regularly open our door for a university student for an internship. This summer we chose Vanessa- the future Master of Science in Physics. You might wonder how a person coming from fundamental academic research can asset from a consulting company. It was challenging for her to focus more on the business part of the research, but she understood that Amires’ work also requires scientific and technical comprehension in various scientific fields. We wished to know her feedback about her stay with us, therefore we asked Vanessa to share her experience.

Yes, Vanessa is studying Physics at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and will be graduating with a Master of Science this fall. She conducted her Bachelor’s and Master’s research at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in the Division of Medical Physics in Radiology, mainly working on high-field magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) of the human brain. During her time at AMIRES, she worked together with several project managers and data analysts in order to get an insight into their versatile daily activities with interesting research topics focusing on the strategic fields of Energy Efficiency, Additive Manufacturing, Photonics, Flexible Electronics, and Regenerative Medicine and Medical Devices.

“What I liked the most about the job was the fact, that it requires not only administrative and management tasks, but also a scientific and technical comprehension for research and innovation projects in various scientific fields. At the same time, I also acquired soft and administrative skills which will be helpful for my upcoming PhD studies, as well as for any future job I will work on afterwards” said Vanessa.

Vanessa got also the opportunity to learn about the various funding schemes of the European Union (H2020, FP7), as well as how much hard work needs to be done to create international sustainable partnerships and cooperation.

“My upcoming work as a scientist in an international working environment will definitely benefit from the knowledge, I have gained during my time here at AMIRES.

Amires team had a pleasure to co-work with her and wish her all the best in her future endeavours. Each generation brings with its greater tech-savvy than the last and each brings its own unique approaches. After our experiences we encourage companies to take the opportunity to involve youth people and seek their feedback. These interactions provide them the opportunity to incorporate what they’ve taught themselves into the real world.

Access Innovative Smart lightweight composite materials and components

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR CALLS IN HORIZON 2020

The European Commission has officially released the 2018-2020 Work Programme for the individual topics and provided insights into the upcoming calls. During its final three years Horizon 2020 will provide further investments of around €30 billion in research and Innovation. Find the work programme 2018-2020, the final round of calls under Horizon 2020, below:

Funding & tender opportunities

INCREDIBLE 10th ANNIVERSARY OF AMIRES

Happy Birthday AMIRES! We reminisced about our journey that has been keeping us 10 years on and celebrated at the Zámek Kynšperk, a beautiful castle in the Czech Republic, together with all the colleagues and their families. Within this period of time, we have grown an exceptional level of collective motivation in our team that describes our company culture. AMIRES means a friend of the research and this serves as one of our guiding value such that our experiences and expertise can be only overshadowed by our friendly approach. By a friend we mean our employees – today we are already ten of us, from two 10 years ago. We come from 5 different nationalities, regardless the gender and race, including Italy, Kenya, Montenegro, Slovakia and Czech. With an equal number of men and women, our company embodies gender equality. We believe that our guidance and thematic expertise have uplifted your work and stimulate your results.

Greetings from our team and their family members.

Upcoming 2020 calls in Horizon 2020

Do you aspire to prepare a proposal addressing a topic under the upcoming calls in Societal Challenge, focusing on the topic such as – clean water, nanotechnologies, raw materials, efficient energy or information and communication technology? The European Commission presented the draft versions of Work Programme 2018-2020 for the individual topics and provided insights into the upcoming calls. Find the pre-publication of the work programme 2018-2020, the final round of calls under Horizon 2020, below:

For Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry, Marine, Maritime and Inland Water Research and the Bioeconomy click here.
For Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials, Biotechnology and Advanced Manufacturing and Processing click here.
For Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials click here.
For Secure, clean and efficient energy click here.
For Information and Communication Technologies click here

This is the perfect chance to start building your consortium ahead of the deadline for the submission of proposals in 2020!

SmartEEs Open Call – 8 proposals selected for the 4th cut-off date

AMIRES, the partner responsible for evaluation process of submitted application experiment proposals for SmartEEs Call for Application Experiments is proud to announce that 8 proposals have been selected to proceed with the contracting phase in the 4th cut-off date. The projects are focused on integrating flexible electronics into advanced new products.

Altogether 18 proposals were received for this cut-off date, all of which were evaluated by the SmartEEs Evaluation Panel. The funding amount for each of the selected projects will be decided during the contracting phase.

If you would like to know more about the 4th cut-off evaluation results, please click here.

If you are interested in SmartEEs funding opportunities, you can apply anytime until 20 September 2019. The final cut-off date for evaluations is 20 September 2019 (deadline: 17:00 CET).

EuroNanoForum 2019 Takeaways

Amires had a strong presence at the EuroNanoForum 2019 bi-annual event taking place in Bucharest from 12th to 14th June. This event is focusing on both the industrial application of research results and future strategic research priorities in the area of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials of the Horizon 2020 NMBP Programme and beyond. The event was composed of a conference, workshops, exhibition, site tours, brokerage events and social events, all of which made it a worthwhile occasion.

Amires booth exhibited a number of projects the company is involved in as well as the company’s in-house developed software products AMIplexus and EffiBUILDING. The projects displayed showed the wide range of topics Amires is involved in from photonics & electronics pilot lines (InPulse, Lyteus, SmartEEs, InSCOPE) and nano-enabled materials (OASIS), to additive manufacturing (Manuela) and energy storage (Smart2Go, SABINA).

On the last day of the event a workshop called “Boosting Innovation for EU Industry” was organized by the European Commission. Amires’ CEO Rudolf Fryček acted as one of the panel experts talking about Amires’ involvement in innovation ecosystem building in Europe through different Pilot Lines, Open Innovation Test Beds and Digital Innovation Hubs.

Innovation Performance in EU Countries

If you wish to know the strengths and weaknesses of national innovation systems in the EU member states, the European Commission released the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). The EIS shows that Sweden is the EU’s innovation leader this year. Data takes into account four types of indicators – Framework conditions, Investments, Innovation activities, and Impacts. Compared to last year, Innovation performance improved for 24 EU countries that have a lead over the US for the first time. These findings can help countries identify areas they need to upgrade. Take a closer look at counties’ profile HERE.

WASCOP results in EURONEWS

A dedicated serie called Quenching the thirst of concentrated solar power plants of the EURONEWS FUTURIS programme has been dedicated to the cooling and cleaning solutions in WASCOP. The programme has presented the dust barriers, soiling sensors, special coating mirrors, ultrasonic cleaning system, and a hybrid water cooler prototype, currently under validation in CIEMAT-PSA facilities, as well as versatile cooler and storage tank currently being tested at CEA-Cadarache. Many of these experiments will soon be tested in working power plants in Spain as part of a further European Union project SOLWATT and could be commercially available within three years. The serie is available to watch here.

Smart2Go first steps towards a smart and flexible energy supply platform

How to combine energy harvesting elements, energy storage and supply system, sensors and lighting elements into an autonomous energy-supply platform for wearable electronics? Which are the technical specifications (for each component) and requirements (including extreme environment conditions) that will allow the smooth integration of Smart2Go platform into the two challenging applications (sport equipment and safety garments)? The Smart2Go partners are now addressing these questions to define the system design.
Please, stay updated about the Smart2Go results! More information are available on project website: www.smart2go-project.eu

Pilot Testing of IOTSU® Flexi – Partner Search

Flexible electronics enables to produce thin and lightweight the Internet of things (IoT) devices. Finnish company Small Data Garden (SDG) recently developed (supported by SmartEEs) a prototype of a new device based on flexible electronics/substrate (IOTSU® Flexi), ideal for asset or cold chain monitoring, logistics in general and supporting services. It enables monitoring of acceleration, orientation, positioning, temperature and other parameters. SDG is currently looking for partners willing to start the piloting phase and real life scenario development. AMIRES supports SDG in business development and creation of strategic partnerships – supported by SmartEEs project. Send us your requests for your pre-commercial testing of IOTSU® Flexi.

Why the European election matter for science?

The upcoming European Parliament elections will be fought on many issues and results will matter plenty for science and Horizon Europe. Eurosceptics are forecast to make major gains in the elections that could force the next Commission to prioritise issues such as protection, defence and borders over economic and social convergence. The clash of values will have ramifications for science and research funding. Researchers hope for a new Parliament that is willing to defend science against competing budget demands. Read the whole article HERE.

The Resources of R&I actors across the EU

The European Commission recently published a Staff Working Document (SWD) on Technology Infrastructures (8th April 2019) which follows an analysis of the EU investments done through various funding programmes. Most technology infrastructures rely upon a mix of private and public (national and EU) funding. Under Horizon 2020, the EU has invested some EUR 1.2 billion while the European Regional Development Fund is providing in the 2014-2020 programmes around EUR 16 billion. The SWD suggests that there is a “critical momentum to be more ambitious, exploring with relevant national and regional stakeholders a shared vision and jointly developing a European strategy for technology infrastructures to support industry scale-up and technology diffusion across Europe”. The documents shows an estimated breakdown of the EC contribution to projects supporting technology infrastructures, i.e. establishing upscaling, demonstration and validation facilities and services for SMEs and industry users.

EUR 545.6 million- Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
EUR 628.4 million- Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials, Biotechnology and Advanced Manufacturing and Processing (NMBP)
EUR 123 million – the PILOTS and Factories of the Future (FOF)

Click HERE for the full document.

The future EU programme for 2021-2027

The European Parliament endorsed the provisional agreement on HORIZON EUROPE, the next EU research and innovation programme for the next period from 2021 to 2027. The adoption and proposed budged of €94.1 billion for R&D are subject of formal approval by new members of the European Parliament. HORIZON EUROPE will feature a Three-Pillar-Structure similar to Horizon 2020 with some changes to content and priorities to carry on making the difference in the society. Carlos Moedas the European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation also expressed support for Horizon EU on his Twitter account saying that investing in research and innovation is investing in Europe’s future, in knowledge and new solutions to maintain and improve the European way of life. Click HERE for the full topic texts.

€10K for 5 Winning Contestant of HORIZON IMPACT AWARDS

THE HORIZON IMPACT AWARD is the European Commission’s initiative to celebrate the use of research results to create value for the society. These projects must be funded by FP7 and Horizon 2020 programmes.
Participants can apply for the contest online. The full details are explained in the following documents.

Hurry up and apply before 28 May!

Enhanced user experience with the new AMIPLEXUS 3.1

A revamped AMIPLEXUS 3.1 was released in April 2019 with new features.
The New features include:

Word clouds – quickly visualize your text search results
Highlighting – see where your search terms popped up to easily confirm their relevance
Organization cooperation – assess cooperation links between selected organizations

While the Additional data for Horizon 2020 is as below:

Results in Brief, Summaries, Reports and Work Performed – further increasing the relevance of your text searches

Contact us for a free 15-min presentation or trial version, to discover how AMIPLEXUS can add value to your innovation-based decisions!

OASIS H2020 project kicked-off

The OASIS project (Open Access Single entry point for scale-up of Innovative Smart lightweight composite materials and components) funded by the European Commission within its Horizon 2020 programme has officially kicked off! The consortium of 20 partners has met for the first time on 6th and 7th March in the premises of the project coordinator Tecnalia in Bilbao, Spain.

The OASIS project aims at fulfilling market potential of nano-enabled multifunctional lightweight products by:

Gathering the manufacturing capacity of 12 pilot lines from nanoparticles to final product.
Establishing a thorough service offer for associated technical & business development
Granting direct access to the whole ecosystem through a Single Entry Point, for easier access especially for SMEs.

Oriented towards enhanced polymer-matrix composites and aluminium, the pilot lines cover the whole manufacturing chain from nanoscale structures in unprocessed form, to intermediate products with nanoscale features and finally nano-enabled products. So, as to provide full support to interested companies, the new “Open Innovation Test Bed” will also offer complementary technical (modelling, characterization, toxicology, life cycle assessment) and non-technical services (business innovation coaching, business planning, access to private capital). These modular services will be provided to companies, particularly to SMEs, to gain access to unique facilities and knowledge without high capital investment. Such support is particularly needed at the crossroads between three KETs (nanotechnologies, advanced materials and advanced manufacturing and processes) and in an era of multifunctional products when wide scope of know-how is needed for pre-production or industrial low-medium volume production.

The project’s official kick-off meeting has set the plan for first actions to build this innovative ecosystem approach. Updated information about the project will be given at each stage through OASIS website.

Transparent and flexible – the new lightness of light

Ultra-thin, transparent and flexible – these are the attributes that distinguish the innovative OLED technology. Within the European research project PI-SCALE, with a total of 14 partners, the lighting experts of EMDE development of light act as so-called “launching customers”, i.e. as pilot customers. Together with renowned companies such as AUDI AG, Pilkington and REHAU, the experts contribute their know-how to adapting a pilot line under the LYTEUS branding to the needs of the market and customers. The aim is to make the innovative OLED lighting technology available to companies of any size in order to launch products quickly and cost-effectively. As an example of new possibilities in lighting design, EMDE development of light GmbH is presenting for the first time a prototype for a light art object at LOPEC in Munich (19 to 21 March 2019), which demonstrates the aesthetics and immaterial appeal of the latest OLED technology.

“COLORLOOP” prototype © EMDE development of light GmbH

The prototype with the name “COLORLOOP” was developed in close cooperation between the founder of the GmbH and artist Thomas Emde and his colleague, product designer Christoph Petersen. The comprehensive design concept can be seen in the object – it is both an aesthetic work of art and a smart, technologically highly innovative light object.
The EMDE development of light GmbH team has many years of experience with the new OLED light and developed the world’s first OLED luminaire series, which has been available on the market since autumn 2016 under its own OMLED brand. Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) can not only produce pleasantly warm and glare-free light, but can also be colorful, transparent and flexible. In order to demonstrate the almost infinite application potential of OLEDs, the interdisciplinary team of artists, designers and engineers developed a light object that playfully handles additive color mixing and the immaterial aesthetics of ultra-thin and flexible OLEDs.
Product designer Christoph Petersen of EMDE development of light about the motivation for developing the demonstrator: “Our goal is to show the variety of new applications with OLED light on an object with which the user can interact. Our light object “COLORLOOP” plays with the effect of additive color mixing by using magnetic contacting to arrange OLEDs in the three light colors red, yellow and blue differently on spring steel rings. The spring steel rings are used for electrical contacting and mechanical fixing as well as for shaping the flexible OLEDs. An advantage of the construction of the light object is the simple exchangeability of each OLED. “
Thomas Emde adds: “With “COLORLOOP” we want to present the new transparent light directly from the laboratory to the public and show application possibilities of OLED light for the design of space and atmosphere. We see new possibilities for using light as a design element for our living spaces in the immaterial appearance of transparent OLEDs and the lightness they bring. We at “COLORLOOP” are not primarily interested in a functional benefit, but rather in creating a special atmosphere by superimposing the various light colors.”
Together with research partner VTT from Finland, a battery-powered driver with programmable control was developed for the “COLORLOOP”. This means that the light object does not require a cable and different light scenes can be retrieved.
The transparent and flexible OLEDs come from the Fraunhofer FEP in Dresden. Their pilot and research lines for roll-to-roll and sheet-to-sheet production of OLEDs are currently the only ones in Europe on which this new technology can be manufactured. The teams from EMDE and Fraunhofer FEP want to work together in the future on challenges in the production and integration of OLEDs in various applications and are open to further development with partners of industry.
The prototype can be seen during LOPEC 2019, from 19 to 21 March 2019 at the ICM in Munich, at OE-A booth, stand no. 216 (hall B0). In addition, the design demonstrator by EMDE was submitted to this year’s OE-A Competition 2019.

Demonstrator Competition LOPEC 2019:

Stand: OE-A booth
Stand-No: 2016, Hall B0
Further information about the OE-A competition at LOPEC 2019: https://www.lopec.com/general/program/lopec-award/index.html

“COLORLOOP” prototype © EMDE development of light GmbH

The results were achieved on the joint pilot line service LYTEUS of the EU-funded PI-SCALE project and financed within the framework of the European Union’s research and innovation programme Horizon 2020 under grant agreement No. 688093.

Light from a roll – hybrid OLED creates innovative and functional luminous surfaces

Up to now, OLEDs have been used exclusively as a novel lighting technology for use in luminaires and lamps. However, flexible organic technology can offer much more: as an active lighting surface, it can be combined with a wide variety of materials, not just to modify but to revolutionize the functionality and design of countless existing products. To exemplify this, the Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP together with the company EMDE development of light GmbH will be presenting hybrid flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLEDs) integrated into textile designs within the EU-funded project PI-SCALE for the first time at LOPEC (March 19-21, 2019 in Munich, Germany) as examples of some of the many possible applications.

The Fraunhofer FEP, a provider of research and development services in the field of organic electronics, has long been involved in the development of technologies and processes for organic electronics and component integration. The team at the design company of EMDE development of light GmbH also has many years of experience with the new organic light-emitting diode light (OLED), including development of the world’s first OLED luminaire series. OLEDs cannot only emit colored and wide area light, but they themselves are also extremely low-profile and flexible, allowing them to be integrated into many types and shapes of surfaces. They can be even be designed to be transparent and dimmable. To demonstrate the sheer endless potential for employing OLEDs, the designers at EMDE are now integrating flexible OLEDs for the first time into a motorcycle jacket. Used as a material for clothing, OLEDs not only can trigger completely new aesthetic trends, they can also provide active illumination instead of just limited reflectance. This enhanced visibility from all angles means the wearer can be seen more clearly, increasing rider safety.

This is made possible by fabricating the OLEDs on flexible substrates such as plastic films and connecting them to conductive threading for their supply of electrical power. Together with the HOLST Center in Eindhoven, the Fraunhofer FEP in Dresden, Germany, has now for the first time implemented an extended approach of the technology for the OLED on the joint pilot line service LYTEUS within the EU-funded project PI-SCALE – a hybrid OLED.

These new flexible luminous surfaces combine the advantages of printed and evaporated layers in one component. Specifically, the passivation layers, the metallization, and an organic layer were printed in a roll-to-roll process on barrier films from the HOLST Centre (Netherlands). All the subsequent layers required by the OLED were vapor-deposited at Fraunhofer FEP with the help of its R2R evaporation tool, which is unique worldwide. Optical output is very homogeneous thanks to printed metallization over the entire surface of the component.

Claudia Keibler-Willner, head of department at the Fraunhofer FEP, explains: “We have taken a major step forward in economical fabrication processes for OLEDs. The results are impressive: the OLED shines very uniformly. The use of the roll-to-roll process also promises considerable cost reductions for future components. By combining printed and vaporized layers, process throughput and production speed can be increased up to 100 times.”

Clear advantages for designers result – infinitely long materials with practically unrestricted dimensions and configurations can be created. The only limitation is the 30 cm roll width of the substrate material. Thomas Emde of EMDE development of light GmbH looks ahead: “We are very pleased to present a first design demonstrator using the hybrid OLEDs from the EU project PI-SCALE at LOPEC 2019. After examining the first samples, we decided on a prototype that would combine imagination with a practical application. We exhibit a few meters of the hybrid OLED in its raw form from the roll as a “pure” material component. Its transformation into a future product is illustrated through the example of our eyecatcher motorcycle jacket with luminous, integrated, flexible OLEDs. This will suggest the potential of OLEDs as an innovative surface material for interior design and product applications, fashion and textile designs, and architectural and signage uses.”

The Fraunhofer FEP and EMDE teams want to tackle challenges of fabrication and integration of OLEDs with different surfaces jointly in the future and are open to further development projects with industrial partners.

The exhibits can be seen during LOPEC 2019 in Munich, Germany from March 19-21, 2019 at Hall B0, booth no. 407 of the Fraunhofer FEP and the OE-A competition area. In addition, the aforementioned design demonstrator from EMDE as well as other design kits from Fraunhofer FEP have been submitted to this year’s OE-A Competition.

Prototypes of the Eyecatcher motorcycle jacket with luminous integrated flexible OLEDs at LOPEC 2019
© EMDE development of light GmbH

The results were achieved on the joint pilot line service LYTEUS of the EU-funded PI-SCALE project and financed within the framework of the European Union’s research and innovation programme Horizon 2020 under grant agreement No. 688093.

SmartEEs Open Call – 4 proposals selected for the 3rd cut-off date

AMIRES, the partner responsible for evaluation process of submitted application experiment proposals for SmartEEs Call for Application Experiments is proud to announce that 4 proposals have been selected to proceed with the contracting phase in the 3rd cut-off date. The projects are focused on integrating flexible electronics into advanced new products.

Altogether 26 proposals were received for this cut-off date, all of which were evaluated by the SmartEEs Evaluation Panel. The funding amount for each of the selected projects will be decided during the contracting phase.

If you would like to know more about the 3rd cut-off evaluation results, please click here.

If you are interested in SmartEEs funding opportunities, you can apply anytime until 20 September 2019. The next cut-off date for evaluations is 19 April 2019 (deadline: 17:00 CET).

Pilot line project lnPulse launches to give Europe edge in integrated photonics

The four-year project InPulse kicked off in Eindhoven on 23 January. It will offer new-entrant companies direct access to state-of-the-art manufacturing of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) based on indium phosphide. This will enable the development of products for a wide range of new markets. 16 European partners have started InPulse to reduce barriers and accelerate development. They are backed by 14 million Euros of funding from the European Commission.

The pilot line will enable innovators to develop products fast, thus being able to focus on their products rather than the technologically complex task of fabrication. Currently there are only a handful of companies that can develop PIC-enabled products. They do this with their own in-house fabs (production lines), and a consequence is that start-ups with promising ideas have trouble entering the market. The InPulse manufacturing pilot line therefore enables new entrants to take their concepts from prototype to pilot production on industry tools and processes. InPulse connects the design process to manufacturing, testing and packaging to streamline the development cycle for businesses who do not own a fabrication plant or have production knowledge.
The project partners of InPulse will create manufacturing-grade process design kits that will be the automated intermediary between the design, production and testing. The separation of design and fabrication process know-how enables newcomers to avoid the prohibitive investment overheads in PIC fabrication technology.
InPulse will use closely aligned methods that scale in volume and that focus on accelerating the design cycle, creating more accurate and predictable design tools, manufacturing and high-throughput testing. The project builds on the pioneering work of the Joint European Platform for Photonic Integration of Components and Circuits (JePPIX.eu), which is already offering PIC prototyping services. InPulse enables the transition to manufacturing.

The first phase of work will focus on making the technology more robust and on putting in place the business processes for accelerated development programs. In the second stage of the project some thirty new products will be developed to demonstrate the pilot line capability. For this phase the project consortium is looking for additional companies and designers that want to take their ideas and designs to pre-production.

The project partners of InPulse are the Eindhoven University of Technology, AMIRES, Aarhus University, Bright Photonics, European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC), ficonTEC Service, Fraunhofer HHI, III-V Lab, Mellanox Technologies, Photon Design, Synopsys, SMART Photonics, Technobis Fibre Technologies, Tyndall National Institute, VLC Photonics and VPIphotonics.

The project is supported by the European Commission, the Photonics21 Public Private Partnership (PPP), and the PhotonDelta integrated photonics eco-system. InPulse builds on JePPIX technology. The European Commission has defined photonics as one of the six key enabling technologies of Europe. More information is available here.

Flexible OLED panels open up new opportunities for product packaging

Bright eye-catching packaging helps products stand out on the shelf. With OLED lighting, products can stand out even more and have the potential to add even more features to product packaging. In the case of the Lyteus bottle label, a flexible OLED panel embedded in the paper label lights up to show the logo.

The Lyteus label features a rectangular OLED panel integrated into the label, which shines through a printed cut-out in the paper label to display the logo. However, the OLEDs can be printed to produce any shape or colour. And highlighting the product brand or catching the attention of passing shoppers is just one possible application. They could also be used to highlight specific product details, such as a drink’s flavour or colour, or to provide additional information.
Integrating sensors into the packaging further extends the possible uses, opening up a whole new range of opportunities. For example, the package could light up only when touched or when the product was opened, the OLEDs could flash in time to music or light up to warn that the contents were hot.
The OLED panels are incredibly thin, just 330 µm thick, making them ideal for embedding into paper labels. They are also very flexible, so can be easily bent for curved objects like a bottle or cup. Currently, production of the OLED labels is based on a sheet-to-sheet process. For mass manufacturing for labels, the process needs to be scaled up to be able to produce large numbers of labels consistently. Therefore, Holst Centre is developing a roll-to-roll pilot production process to address the challenges of producing OLED labels in large quantities.
“We are seeing a lot of interest from the packaging market for OLED labels”, said Erno Langedijk, Business Development & Program Manager at Holst Centre. “Currently we are working towards the launch of a roll-to-roll pilot line for OLED labels, which will be needed by the industry to print the necessary volumes of labels for mass production.”
Holst Centre is also working to further develop the technology for labels. For example, the current implementation still needs wires and a cell battery. These could be replaced in the future with flat, flexible batteries or even flexible wireless charging coils. And it may eventually be possible to integrate flexible OLED displays, providing even more possibilities for attracting and informing customers about products.
For manufacturers interested in the technology, Holst Centre offers three test kits. The Starter kit includes some sample basic OLEDs panels, the Standard kit includes a wider range of shapes and colours, and the Premium kit is customized to the customer’s specific needs with OLEDs in any shape or colour.

copyright Lyteus_Bottle with OLED printed label

European pilot line PI-SCALE, branded as Lyteus, brings together leaders in OLED technology from across Europe to create a pilot production line and product development services for OLED products. Lyteus is an initiative of the Photonics Public Private Partnership co-founded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 688093 (project PI-SCALE).

Ready, set, go! Smart2Go project left the starting blocks!

The Smart2Go project, officially started on 1^st January 2019, organized its first meeting on 14-15 January 2019 in Dresden (Germany) at the Fraunhofer FEP Institute. Smart2Go is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme aiming at the development of an autonomous energy-supply platform. Based on the results of the project it will be possible to use a wearable without caring about recharging over its entire lifetime. More information about the project can be found at www.smart2go-project.eu (full version available in April 2019).

Smart2Go_Group photo-1440x1578.jpg

During the meeting, 9 EU innovation performers (researchers and companies) involved in flexible electronics and energy scavenging and storage and 2 industries with very challenging product use cases discussed the work plan for the development of materials and components to be integrated in the energy storage and harvesting system. External experts in the field of standards for printed electronics, flexible electronics based products and R2R coating, printing and laminating processes also participated to the meeting.

Smart2Go project has a duration of 36 months, please, stay updated about the upcoming project results!

SABINA project developed its first training tutorials

SABINA is an EU funded H2020 research and innovation project that aims to develop new technology and financial models to connect, control and actively manage generation and storage assets to exploit synergies between electrical flexibility and the thermal inertia of buildings. Besides the R&D progress, the important aspects for the SABINA consortium are training activities, as well-educated professionals in the domain of energy efficiency are a prerequisite for a successful and effective energy management. The SABINA training activities will be realized through tutorials, practical training and summer school that will be organized at the end of the project.
After two years of its running, SABINA team prepared a first package of tutorials, giving general introduction into SABINA project and overview of the topics that the team have worked on up to now, e.g. modelling for thermal mass exploitation, model predictive control at the building level or novel generation of RTU. The tutorials are available as an on-line presentation on following link.
In the future when the tutorials content will be turned into practical workshops, it will be further specified based on the targeted audience of the trainings.

European Parliament Supports €120 B EU Research Budget

The European Parliament officialy approved budget for the upcoming EU research and development framework programme Horizon Europe. Not only it approved the €94.1 billion proposition made by the European Commission, it even called for an increase to €120 billion. Even though some member states led by the Netherlands have already expressed their disagreement with such tremendous budgetary increase, this vote has been an important milestone in moving towards the next reserach framework programme.

The legislation adopted by Parliament does not cover the precise terms for grant applications under Horizon Europe; that will come later from the Commission. The current rules have been criticised for being too bureaucratic, and there is a concern that the next set could be even worse. Another concern is the budget for agriculture research. There is a proportionate cut in terms of agriculture, food and natural resources from the Commission’s 10.6 per cent (of the Horizon Europe budget) to 9 per cent, at a time when there are huge challenges for the agricultural sector in meeting the needs of food security and emissions reduction in line with the Paris agreement. This topic is likely to be a subject of further discussion.

MANUELA Additive Manufacturing using Metal Pilot Line Project kicked-off

MANUELA project has been officially launched on 1st October 2018 and will last for four years until September 2022. Partners of the consortium met for the first time in Brussels, Belgium during the project´s kick-off meeting that was organized on 25-26 October 2018. Relying on two major Additive Manufacturing technologies (LPBF: Laser Powder Bed Fusion and EBM: Electron Beam Melting), MANUELA aims at deploying an open-access pilot line facility, covering the whole production sequence, to show full potential of metal AM for industrial AM production.

At first, careful instrumentation and adaptation of LPBF & EBM machines will allow increased process reliability and speed. Secondly, the pilot line – including the adapted processes – will be deployed. The hardware layer will integrate novel process quality control monitoring and automated post-AM handling and processing. The line will be fed by design/optimization and AM process simulation workshops. Those workshops will collect continuous feedback from the physical parts of the pilot lines, to increase process reliability and robustness. MANUELA relies on a consortium composed of industrial end user’s, suppliers, (material/powder, AM hardware, quality monitoring system, software, automation and post-AM treatment) as well as top research institutes in powderbed metal-AM, covering full range of AM technology chain for pilot line deployment. The deployed pilot line will be validated with use cases, covering wide span of applications including automotive, aerospace, energy and medical.

New Funding & Tenders Portal by EC

The Participant Portal which was used as a communication tool of European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme has been replaced by recently introduced Funding & Tenders Portal. The aim of the new Portal is to host all centrally managed EU programmes in one location. Moreover, the Portal will serve as a central depository of calls for tenders and the related procurement contracts. The current users of the Participant Portal will be able to transfer using their current log-in credentials. As of end of November, users accessing the Participant Portal will be automatically redirected to the new portal. Very soon later, the old portal will be switched off. Click HERE for details.

EffiBUILDING presented as dissemination and exploitation platform at the ECTP Conference

Our database for the energy efficiency solutions for buildings have been presented to the ECTP conference on the 13^th and 14^th November in Brussels.

More than 170 stakeholders from the whole construction value-chain and representatives of the European Commission shared their experience and discussed how the EU construction industry is shaping a high-tech Sustainable Built Environment.

EffiBUILDING was presented as a platform to disseminate and exploit the project results, together with the best case of our Member GOLD Q-Air from Trimo Group, attracting many questions and excellent inputs from the conference audience. Presentation is available for download here.

SOLWATT, winner of the Quality Innovation Award

SOLWATT project has been selected as the winner in the national phase of the Quality Innovation Award in the Potential Innovations category. The jury highlighted that the project meets the five characteristics that were valued: novelty, usefulness, learning, customer orientation and effectiveness. The award was delivered on Tuesday, November 27, at a ceremony held in the auditorium of CSIC, in Madrid, with the presence of several authorities.
The National Association of Centers of Excellence-CEX has recognized eight Spanish organizations in the national phase of the Quality Innovation Award, QIA, a competition created in 2007 by Excellence Finland to promote innovative projects in companies and organizations, share experiences and give local and international recognition to the best ones, with the ultimate goal of increasing the competitiveness of companies and the participating countries. The other organizations awarded in the other categories were Biocurve, AMADIX, the Royal Academy of History, the consortium of Teruel Airport, Ficosterra, Qualityfry and Textil Santanderina. These eight organizations will compete on February 27 in Beijing to win the international prize in the categories in which they participate.

Foto Grupo galardonados Premios QIA-720x479.JPG

IndTech 2018 Takeaways

INDTECH2018, an event of the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, combined workshops, keynote presentations, talks, matchmaking and exhibition. 12 pre-conference workshops were organized presenting results from EU funded projects and clustering initiatives dealing with batteries, photonics, characterization techniques, advanced materials, safety aspects and Life Cycle Assessment.

Most of the presentations of the conference were focused on the results from the consultation between the European Commission and large industries and how their requirements are reflected into the upcoming H2020 calls. Some aspects were highlighted several times during the event: 1) the required interconnection amongst the different European platforms and pilotlines and 2) the importance of data sharing for the definition of common standards and interfaces. Automation in manufacturing processes and sustainability of the developed technologies were also discussed. During the Medical Technologies session, digitization was pointed out as the current main driver of the industry.

In AMIRES booth, which was a part of the event’s exhibition, the various industrial technologies stakeholders were able to find how they can better benefit from the European research and innovation ecosystem. Examples inlcude:

Universities, RTOs and companies can increase their chances in winning Horizon 2020 funding, find the right partnrs for innovation, follow the latest technology trends and benchmark their performance via AMIplexus cooperation visualizaiton tool
SMEs can innovate their product portfolio by digitization, adopting flexible electronics with the help of SmartEEs European accelleration program for integration of flexible electronics technologies into novel products and apply for the call for applications
Companies can explore new lighting applications with help of Lyteus European pilot line for flexible OLEDs
Companies can ask InScope pilot line for a help with integration of Hybrid TOLAE (H-TOLAE) technologies in the automotive, healthcare, smart packaging and building sectors

Release of AMIPLEXUS Version 3: the innovation data intelligence tool

AMIPLEXUS is a tool for project coordinators, group leaders, technology scouts, advisers, and coaches who want to:

Be more successful in Horizon 2020
Find the best partners for innovation
Follow the latest technology trends
Benchmark your performance

AMIPLEXUS version 3 has been released as part of our commitment to continuously provide better and more efficient user experience. The new platform is more user friendly and intuitive; in addition to the previously available semantic based text search and network visualisation showing collaborations and ecosystems of organisations.

The new features in the versions 3 include:

Faster Loading
Faster Searches
More user friendly and intuitive user interface
Data analysis of funding data through interactive and downloadable graphs
These graphs allow the user to visualize the funding trends for various technological areas as by way of analytical visualization in terms of interactive and downloadable graphs for the number of projects, type of funding schemes, and funding cost corresponding to the search criteria. The graphs also allow the comparison of the participation potential of different organizations in H2020 and FP7 programmes.

Geolocation of relevant organizations through interactive and downloadable maps
When searching using different criteria, the interactive maps display the geographical locations of the related organisations on an interactive map for the H2020, FP7, Eureka and Eurostars programmes.

Data filtering through interactive and downloadable data tables
The data tables are interactive and downloadable and contain pertinent information about organisations in H2020, FP7, Eurostar and Eureka programmes that are related to the search criteria. The user can further search and filter within the tables to obtain a specific set of relevant information.

To gain a competitive edge, the rapid processing of available data and timely extraction of insightful information, contact us for a free 15-min presentation to discover the value for your innovation-based decisions!

SmartEEs Open Call – 3 proposals selected for the 2nd cut-off date

AMIRES, the partner responsible for evaluation process of submitted application experiment proposals for SmartEEs Call for Application Experiment, is proud to announce that 3 proposals have been selected to proceed with the contracting phase in the 2nd cut-off date. The selected companies come from France and their projects will be focused on integrating flexible electronics into wooden sports equipment, car wooden dashboard, and flexible tags for asset management and tracking.

Altogether, 18 proposals were received for this cut-off date and they were all evaluated by the SmartEEs Evaluation Panel. The funding amount for each of the selected projects will be decided during the contracting phase.

If you would like to know more about the 2nd cut-off evaluation results and about the selected application experiments, please click here.

If you are a start-up, an SME or a Mid-cap and if you have an idea of how to integrate flexible electronics technologies provided by SmartEEs consortium into novel end-products, you can still apply until the expiry of the 3rd cut-off date – 16 November.

Approaches To Smart Packaging

The second InSCOPE workshop “Embracing Opportunities in Smart Packaging” was held at CPI premises, Darlington, the UK on 26^th September 2018. The event featured a series of presentations from industry experts in hybrid and embedded printable electronics, discussions, networking and a tour of CPI’s newly expanded printable electronics scale-up facility. InSCOPE presented their findings and opportunities of a pilot line service to advance the accuracy and reliability for hybrid printable electronics and discuss the pharma approach to smart packaging.There were a number of drivers discussed, which included:

Diabetes – there’s a significant rise in the number of people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes that need constant support in order to manage their conditions. This is an opportunity for lightweight wearables/tags and sensing systems. There are opportunities for development of smart wearable (potentially transdermal) patches that can
1. Measure levels of glucose or other biomarkers in sweat/blood
2. Measure levels of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API – potentially insulin) in the patch
3. Deliver medication/API to the body as part of a feedback loop

Poor patient adherence/compliance – the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) estimates that long term adherence to medication is as low as 50%. There’s a significant opportunity for smart packaging solutions to support an improvement in this.

Crowded market for direct mail – there is currently no way to understand if a directto-home mailing has been opened/read. Interacting with a smartphone could give usage statistics or lights or ‘bling’ could make the mailing look more attractive and increase customer interaction probabilities. Note that cost/price of the electronics needs to be low here, although there is a discussion to be had on price versus value to the customer carrying out the mailing. The ELEP envelope case was specifically discussed.

End of life/sustainability – there’s a Worldwide drive to reduce waste, including plastics. This presents opportunities for reuse of packaging and using electronics to identify materials as they go into waste streams, this could enhance recyclability.

In order to realise smart packaging and printable electronic solutions InSCOPE has a significant capability set (seen by workshop participants on the 26^th September 2018) ranging from:

Test and validation of printed electronic materials – this includes inks (for sensing, conductivity, antennas etc), adhesives, active substrates etc.
Process design, development scale up and test of printed electronic components – including antennas, sensors, communication etc
Product and process design, development scale up and test of flexible hybrid electronic sub-systems and devices – such as smart packaging, smart tags, labels, wearables etc

The InSCOPE project is particularly keen to talk to organisations interested in the development of smart packaging in order to support process and device development as well as scaling up to market seeding volumes.

Rudolf Fryček, CEO of AMIRES, on Integration of Flexible Electronics Technologies into Novel Produts

Dr. Rudolf Fryček, CEO of AMIRES, has provided an interview to the SmartEEs Horizon 2020 project, an original European acceleration program dedicated to help innovative companies to access new markets and grow their business in adopting flexible electronics in new products lines. Within SmartEEs, AMIRES not only provides a support to the coordinator with management and coordination of the project, but has also been responsible for the evaluation process of submitted proposals for the Call for Application Experiments (AEs). In addition, AMIRES has been tasked with setting up and management of a Helpdesk for the entire duration of the Call. Finally, AMIRES is also involved in procedures setting and appropriate templates definition for all the above-mentioned tasks.

Click HERE and find out more about the Call for Application Experiments, the Helpdesk, the evaluation process and more.

Widening Actions in Horizon Europe

In preparation of the upcoming Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, the European Commission has published a report titled “Review of Issues Related to Methods, Criteria and Indicators for Widening Actions“. The report provides recommendations for selection of criteria and indicators that might be used to define targets for future “Widening Actions” designed to address inequality in research and innovation performance across EU Member States.

The assessment indicates that there are advantages and disadvantages to all potential indicators and that no single indicator adequately captures all aspects of the research and innovation process. Existing composite indicators could be adopted, but there are disadvantages in terms of complexity, timeliness and the ease with which these indicators can be reproduced. An alternative approach to combining indicators is proposed based on “filtering” Member States using their ranking on three selected variables:

Economic status – GDP per head
Research performance – % of scientific publications in the top 10% citations
Innovation performance – Number of PCT Patent applications per million population

The report recommends that the Commission considers further the merits of a “filtering” approach based on the three shortlisted variables. Click HERE to access the report.

Discover how magicians (EU researchers) fight evil (cancer) in the ULTRAPLACAD project video!

Discover how magicians (EU researchers) fight evil (cancer) in the ULTRAPLACAD project video!
Cancer is a leading cause of death in Europe. The video is describing, in a simple way, the ULTRAPLACAD approach for early diagnosis of cancer through detection of biomarkers circulating in blood (liquid biopsy), thus reducing invasive procedures. The development of the ULTRAPLACAD platform enables a broad range of clinical applications and is therefore a step to saving thousands of lives.

Great success for the Workshop WASCOP Water Consumption Management in CSP Plants at SolarPaces 2018

141 total registrations and more than 50 external participants are the numbers of the WASCOP Water Consumption Management in CSP Plants at SolarPaces2018. For the first time, SolarPaces included the topic of the Water Consumption Management in the conference and WASCOP Consortium, together with the sister projects SOLWATT and MinWaterCSP, has contributed to provide solutions to the needs of the CSP community in the topic. CSP Industrial stakeholders, policy makers, researchers and students, have discussed with a range panel of experts about the proposed cooling and cleaning solutions. A huge thanks to MASEN (Co-organiser) and SolarPaces committee for the support to achieve this great result!

MOSAIC concept presented at SolarPaces2018

Cristobal Villasante has presented at the SolarPaces2018 the MOSAIC concept through the oral presentation “MOSAIC, a new CSP plant concept for the highest concentration ratios at the lowest cost” (IK4-TEKNIKER and CENER) in the Central Receivers System session. A large and interested audience has shown his interest and curiosity to the concept. Furthermore, the poster “Analysis of convective heat losses for a solar bowl helical receiver” from POLITO, CENER, and IK4-TEKNIKER, has been published in the poster session of the conference. Both publications will become the official reference material course of MOSAIC, which it will be updated during the project lifespan.

AMIplexus Façade Technology Analysis

Introduction

Research and developmental efforts have been engaged in the race to develop zero energy and carbon free buildings in European cities. Due to the dual impact on both visual aesthetics and energy efficiency, façade technologies have naturally been a point of increasing interest within the Horizon 2020 framework, predominantly in the Innovation Action (IA) and Research and Innovation Action (RIA) sectors. Current technologies under study in H2020 include fluid flow glazing and multifunctional ventilated façades, HVAC and ICT systems, integrated PV and, solid-state perovskite solar cells. Other areas of research are focused on the development of novel biopolymer and composite materials, as well as the establishment of an eco-friendly, efficient manufacturing method for mass production.

Research Focus

Research projects within H2020 have been targeted towards the market introduction and acceptance of an end-product, materials and/or manufacturing process that defines the perfect balance between energy efficiency, environmental friendliness, safety, comfort and cost. Additional desirable properties that would set the standard for future state-of-the-art façade technologies include lighweightness, reduced CO2 emissions, adaptability, high performance insulation, low intrusiveness, reliability and durability. The complete market penetration of these products is, however, currently hindered by limitations such as bulkiness, high costs and insufficient thermal energy conversion efficiency. While the focus is mainly on the development of novel technologies, a few of the projects (e.g. LaWin) plan on developing their products based on already existing platforms to enable rapid market access.
As shown in Figure 1, the largest number of façade technologies projects to have received funding were within the IA and RIA schemes suggesting a clear interest in the advancement of already mature technologies. Expectedly, the largest investments made by the European Union were received by these projects, with only relatively low funds reaching CSA and MSCA initiatives.

H2020 Projects Facade Funding Scheme.jpg

Figure 1. Number of Horizon2020 Projects on Facade Technologies within each Funding Scheme

Key players in this technological area are: FRAUNHOFER GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FOERDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG EV (Research organisation, Germany), ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FEDERALE DE LAUSANNE (Higher Education Institution, Switzerland), Rina Consulting S.P.A. (Private for profit organisation, Italy), NEDERLANDSE ORGANISATIE VOOR TOEGEPAST NATUURWETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK TNO (Research Organisation, Netherlands), FUNDACION TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION (Research organisation, Spain), FUNDACION CARTIF (Research organisation , Spain), YOURISCOM (Brussels), ACCIONA CONSTRUCCION SA (Private for profit organisation, Spain), ACCADEMIA EUROPEA DI BOLZANO (Research organisation, Italy), AGENCIA DE L’HABITATGE DE CATALUNYA (Public body, Spain), SISTEMES AVANCATS DE ENERGIA SOLAR TERMICA SCCL – AIGUASOL (Private for profit organisation, Spain)

Ongoing projects in this technological field:

TRACKWAY
InDeWaG
GOTSolar
PoLaRoll
Q-Air
ESPResSo
BRESAER
BuildHEAT
ABRACADABRA
GELCLAD
4RinEU
Envision
PLUG-N-HARVEST

Past projects in this technological field:

LaWin
E2VENT

SmartEEs 2nd cut-off evaluation process ongoing

The 2nd cut-off for submission of application experiment proposals expired on 20 July, and the evaluation process of submitted proposals is still ongoing. Stay tuned for more information about the results of the selection process which will soon be published here.

If you are a start-up, an SME or a Mid-cap and if you have an idea of how to integrate flexible electronics technologies provided by SmartEEs consortium into novel end-products, you can still apply until the expiry of the 3rd cut-off date – 16 November. Please note that SmartEEs will not support the development of your technologies or research activities, but the integration of existing technologies of involved research teams (RTOs), as described in the Marketplace, into your end-products.

Good luck!

MEDILIGHT Final Press Release

MEDILIGHT project, which developed a smart light system for treatment for wound healing has come to its end. Following the final event, which took place on 2 July 2018, at the premises of Laboratories URGO in Dijon, the project published its final press release. In the document, you can find out how light can be used to improve healing and about the novel solution for the treatment of chronic wounds, which was developed within the scope of the MEDILIGHT project. Click HERE and enjoy the reading!

Update on UK participation to H2020

Yesterday, the government of the United Kingdom has released a technical notice, providing more details to the UK participants to H2020 on terms of the current participation and the continued support to research and innovation by UK government. By extending the underwrite guarantee, the eligibility of UK researchers and businesses to participate in Horizon 2020 will remain unchanged for the remaining duration of the programme. This is set out in the Financial Provisions of the draft Withdrawal Agreement, which has been agreed by both UK and Commission negotiators and welcomed by the other 27 EU countries at March European Council. Moreover, the government states that as a responsible government it needs to plan for every eventuality to ensure that cross-border collaboration in science and innovation can continue after EU exit.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has been chosen to manage the underwrite delivery. In the first instance, UK recipients of Horizon 2020 funding will be invited by UKRI to register their details on a dedicated portal on the GOV.uk website expected to go live in the autumn. The portal is designed to ensure that UKRI has initial information about projects and participants in order to keep researchers and businesses informed of the next steps regarding the implementation of underwrite payments, should they be required.

More information on the extension of the underwrite guarantee can be found HERE.

Micro-Nano-Bio Systems State of Play in EU

A report on the 11th Annual Concentration and Consultation Workshop on Micro-Nano-Bio-Systems (MNBS2017) has been released! The report covers the state of play of EU-funded Micro-Nano-Bio-Systems cluster, which unites EU funded projects covering research, development and system integration across technologies such as microelectronics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, biomaterials, and ICT. During MNBS207, AMIRES presented planned development and commercialization of the Horizon 2020 funded MEDILIGHT project technology for a healing of chronic wounds and also contributed to the definition of recommendations on how to address the main identified challenges in advancing MNBS technologies.

Click HERE to access the report.

Update of H2020 Annotated Model Grant Agreement

As of 3 July 2018, the European Commission has released an updated version of Horizon 2020 Programme Annotated Model Grant Agreement (AGA) (i.e. version 5.0). The changes concern: (1) new presentation of calculations for payments and recoveries, (2) updates due to the adoption of the Guide on grant reductions, (3) annotations on the new Lump Sum Pilot model grant agreement (4) annotations on the new MSCA Special Needs model grant agreement, and other. To access the updated AGA version, please click HERE.

UK and Swiss access to Horizon Europe

In an attempt to enable UK entities participation in the upcoming Horizon Europe programme, the European Commission has set up conditions, which open up the possibility for so called neighbour countries and countries outside the Europe to get an associate membership to the programme. Such status would enable them to take part in EU research under the same conditions as the member states. The legal text is written such, that it allows the European Commission to limit an access of these countries (incl. UK or Switzerland) to only certain parts of the programme. The text proposes to give the EU a right to exclude countries from specific parts of the programme if their involvement would risk undermining the core goal of “driving economic growth in the Union through innovation”.

Until now, associate status granted a country full access to the EU research framework by default. This will not change for countries in the European Economic Area – Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Canada is the only third coutry, which until now showed a serious interest in the associated country status. According to first indications, Switzerland is expected to retain a full access to the programme.

Concentrated solar power projects within Horizon 2020

Concentrated solar power utilizes mirrors and reflective surfaces to reflect and concentrate a large amount of sunlight and solar thermal energy and convert it to heat which is in turn used to drive turbines or generators for power production.

In H2020, most of the CSP-related projects are funded within the Research and Innovation Action scheme-RIA (7 projects) and Innovation Action -IA (8 projects) scheme as shown below. This is an indication that major efforts are focused on the advancement of mature technologies. Similarly, a greater proportion of the funding from European Union is directed towards the RIA (35,352,997 €) and IA (55,148,454 €) projects. Other projects with relatively lower funding, are based on knowledge transfer within the Marie Curie Scheme and innovation support among small enterprises within the SME schemes.

Research efforts within the H2020 framework are aimed at ensuring that CSP becomes more competitive and acceptable in the power-production market through costs reductions and use of innovative materials. To reduce costs, CSP plants are considering plant automation and optimization through machine learning for smart weather forecasting and power dispatch and reduction of water consumption in CSP plants through minimizing water evaporation losses and decreasing the amount of water used for mirror cleaning.

Innovative materials with high reflective capacities are being developed and include protective and anti-soiling coatings of primary reflectors, high-reflective surfaces for heliostats, high-temperature secondary reflectors, receiver coatings for solar towers and line-focus collectors. Materials being developed for thermal storage include corrosion resistant high-temperature metals and coatings for steam and molten salts as well as high thermal performance concrete.

In the H2020 funded projects, the key companies which are active in this technological area are Amires s.r.o (Czech Republic), Laterizi Gambettola SRL (Italy), General Electric Switzerland GMBH (SWITZERLAND), Alstom Power Systems (France), SBP Sonne GMBH (Germany), and Enerray SPA (Italy). Other major entities include CEA (France), Fraunhofer (Germany), Moroccan Agency For Solar Energy SA (Morocco), IRESEN (Morocco), CICe (Spain), CIEMAT (Spain), Electricite de France (France), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), University of Évora (Portugal), Cranfield University (UK), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), ENEA (Italy), Politecnico di Torino (Italy), Real Instituto Elcano (Spain), and CSIC (Spain). The ecosystem of the organizations, institutions, and companies that are actively involved in the CSP projects within the H2020 framework is as shown in the visualization below:

For more insights from AMIPLEXUS Platform on Horizon 2020, FP7, Eureka, and Eurostars programmes, kindly contact John Kennedy Mwangi.

SmartEEs Open Call – 3 proposals selected for the 1st cut-off date

AMIRES, the partner responsible for evaluation process of submitted application experiment proposals for SmartEEs Call for Application Experiment, is proud to announce that 3 proposals have been selected to proceed with the contracting phase in the 1st cut-off date. The projects are focused on integrating flexible electronics into advanced new products.

Altogether, 19 proposals were received for this cut-off date, 18 of which were evaluated by the SmartEEs Evaluation Panel. The funding amount for each of the selected projects will be decided during the contracting phase.

If you would like to know more about the 1st cut-off evaluation results, please check the Public evaluation report form SmartEEs website.

Opportunities to develop and improve your research and digital skills in AMIRES

Two funded schemes are available to boost the research and digital skills of students or young professionals.

Marie Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF-2018) for companies is a new Horizon 2020 opportunity which allows companies to hire qualified researchers at “post-doctoral” level (Ph.D. or master and at least 4 years full-time research experience) for a maximum of 2 years to work on a “bottom-up” (self-chosen) research project. More information about the Marie Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF-2018) for companies is available here.

Furthermore, The EU Commission has developed a specific traineeship scheme to strength ICT specific skills, in fields like cybersecurity, big data, quantum technology and machine learning or boost digital skills for business in areas like web design, digital marketing, and software development. The pilot project will be financed by Horizon 2020 and implemented through Erasmus+. The Digital Opportunity traineeship initiative will start in June 2018 and more all companies are welcome to offer digital traineeships, in particular, those involved in the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition and businesses active in Horizon 2020.

AMIRES offers the opportunities to host talented researchers and students through these innovative schemes to work on data for innovation. If you believe you can make the difference and you are motivated to join our team, please contact us at bajarova@amires.eu.

AMIRES connections for industrially relevant & innovative projects for a better future

AMIRES is a management consulting company for both H2020 and FP7 projects. AMIRES s.r.o branch based in Prague, Czech Republic, is involved in WASCOP, ULTRAPLACAD, MEDILIGHT, PI-SCALE, MOSAIC, SABINA, InSCOPE and SmartEEs projects within the H2020 framework. In the FP7 it was participating in the AMBASSADOR, FLUIDGLASS, TRIBUTE and LASSIE-FP7 projects. The Neuchatel (Switzerland) based branch, AMIRES Sàrl, was involved in UnivSEM, and iONE-FP7 projects.
Collectively, AMIRES s.r.o and AMIRES Sàrl have partnered with over 120 unique partners in these projects. The visualization below illustrates these connections (magenta lines and red dots for AMIRES s.r.o, green lines and blue dots for AMIRES sarl). AMIRES partners are mostly concentrated in the industrial regions of Germany and Austria, UK, the Basque region of Spain, northern Italy, Switzerland and the Benelux countries.

Besides the project partners, AMIRES is also very active in SME coaching and SME Instrument proposals preparation and, thus, is connected to a wide network of SMEs. Recent examples include Pi Lighting, which got SME Phase 1 Seal of Excellence and now plan to demonstrate their Li-Fi system (click HERE for a video in French) or Swiss Advanced Vision, which is now looking for investors as they plan to disrupt the global intraocular lens (IOL) market with their active Intraocular Lens Concept with Real-Time Autofocus for Cataract Surgery (click HERE for details).

€94.1B budget proposed for Horizon Europe

Today, the European Commission has released its €94.1 billion budget proposition for Horizon Europe, an upcoming seven-year research programme, which was labeled the EU’s ‘most ambitious ever’. If approved, this would constitute a €17.1 billion increase compared to the current popular and oversubscribed Horizon 2020 framework programme. The biggest share of funding, namely €52.7 billion, will be allocated to pillar two – global challenges and industrial competitiveness. Within this pillar, the following clusters were defined:

Health – €7.7 billion
Inclusive and secure societies – €2.8 billion
Digital and industry – €15 billion
Climate, energy, and mobility – €15 billion
Food and natural resources – €10 billion

The plan is to increase the ERC budget to €3.6 billion and support the open innovation (including the European Innovation Council) with a total of €13.5 billion. Money for countries that lag behind the highest performing states will now be allocated to “strengthening European Reseach Area”, which is expected to be supported with €2.1 billion, namely €1.7 billion are planned to go to sharing excellence actions and €400 million to reforming and enhancing the European R&I system.

Planned novelties of Horizon Europe are for example moonshot missions and new rules to ease foreign access. In addition to Horizon Europe, the Commission plans a separate budget line of €4.1 billion for defense research. Despite the proposed budgetary increase compared to Horizon 2020, the application success rates that are currently about 11,9% under Horizon 2020 might not improve, mainly due to the cuts of research funding at national levels and stimulation of higher numbers of applicants, Jean-Eric Paquet, director general for research and innovation at the Commission warned.

More information about the proposal for upcoming Horizon Europe can be found HERE.

SOLWATT project has been launched

SOLWATT project has been launched on 1st May 2018 and will last for four years until April 2022.

SOLWATT targets to significantly reduce the water used by CSP plants (by 35% for wet cooled & by 90% for dry cooled). The project proposes to demonstrate the efficiency of innovations on solar field cleaning, power-block cooling, water recycling system, and plant operation strategy. Among these are solutions to reduce solar field water cleaning needs, an operation and maintenance optimizer software including soiling forecaster, a MEE water recovery technology running on otherwise dumped heat from the solar field, and a cooling concept for the turbine condenser storing excess heat when ambient is too warm, then releasing it during cool night times.
The solutions will be implemented at two CSP operational sites, “La Africana” parabolic trough plant in Spain and “Ashalim” central receiver plant in Israel, to demonstrate significant reduction in water use while making CSP more cost effective and achieving near-to-market status. The solutions are best applied together, but each will also bring water and cost savings on its own, thanks to their ability to fit any kind of CSP plant; dry, wet, or hybrid cooled, existing or future ones, tailored to location and policy framework. Their application will save more than 0.5 M€/year of operational cost for a 50 MW CSP plant.
Regarding competition on water resources and humanitarian issues, the social acceptance of CSP will be increased by detailed analysis of case studies and education of local population to the benefits of solar energy.
The targeted savings of water and operation costs will increase CSP’s competitiveness compared to other renewable energy and the electricity market in general, as well as its acceptance within local communities, achieving a big step forward in the SET plan goals for CSP technology by 2020. The consortium, led by TSK Electrónica y Electricidad S.A. (Spain), is made up of 13 partners from 6 European countries plus Israel, including 5 industrials partners, 2 SMEs, 5 RTOs and one University.

More information about the project can be found HERE.

InSCOPE showcases interactive media surface panel for KONE Corporation

Funded by the EU, the InSCOPE project provides an open-access pilot line service that promotes innovation in printed electronics. For the pilot line’s first showcase, the InSCOPE team successfully integrated sensing, lighting and haptic (touch) feedback functionalities to create an interactive media surface panel for the Kone Corporation. Consisting of a smart LED media grid, the showcase panel is implemented in an elevator car where it performs multiple functions including people guidance, decoration, and advertising. The InSCOPE consortium comprises leading research and technological development (RTD) centers in Europe that bring new product concepts to life. Four large European enterprises are involved to showcase and validate the pilot line for applications in the automotive, smart building and medical packaging markets. The five companies are: TNO (Netherlands), CEA (France), CPI (UK), IMEC (Belgium), and VTT (Finland).

The following image shows four showcases in the InSCOPE project related to automotive (top left), medical packaging (top right) and smart buildings (bottom left and right).

By working closely together, these institutes are tailoring hybrid printed electronics equipment and functionalities towards industrial needs. Initial results of the cooperation have brought improvements to printing, assembly and post processing equipment. Additionally, development of printed functionalities (e.g. printed temperature sensors) and assembled functionalities (bare die assembly) have been optimized to fit industrial showcases. The open access pilot line service has been operational since January 2018 and has already processed 15 demo cases. InSCOPE’s ambition is to become the leading hybrid TOLAE pilot line service worldwide.

FIRST RESULTS
In today’s dynamic world, media architecture is one of the most current and recognized fields in urban planning and building design. The Kone Corporation foresees these large area media surfaces being an integral part of future urban space and living. Therefore, developing intelligent wall materials, rather than displays, enables digital solutions to be part of the spatial experience by forming dynamic interior designs.

A first demonstrator prototype of the interactive media surface was shown in PRINSE2018 and at Lopec 2018. The surface was created using roll-to-roll manufacturing of 200 mm x 2400 mm, flexible and transparent display engines. The engines have individual controllable RGB LEDs capable of displaying video content and producing dynamic lighting effects. Scrolling information updates are performed using a Chrome browser application and Bluetooth connection. Long distance capacitive proximity sensors enable UI activation, while short distance capacitive proximity sensors support passenger selection. The media panel can identify people in the elevator with up to one-meter distance, and can recognize different users (adult, child, disabled).

Finally, as part of the UI panel, the haptic feedback element provides user selection feedback. Haptic feedback technology is revolutionizing human-machine interfaces (HMIs), with touch-enabled interfaces already well on the way to replacing traditional pushbutton controls in a broad range of markets.

“We were looking for large scale production using printed electronics solutions, and the InSCOPE project has given us the opportunity to study, share visions and needs based on these technologies,” said Jukka Korpihete, senior lighting design specialist at Kone. The Kone Corporation will implement a total of 18 square meters of interactive media surfaces to an elevator car as a final demonstrator of the product.

To learn more about production guidelines for printed electronics, InSCOPE created the public design handbook of the pilot line (available from the project website at http://inscope-project.eu/handbook/). The EU-funded InSCOPE project will continue to target improvements of advanced printed functions and advanced silicon devices that enable thin, lightweight, bendable, and even stretchable products.

Contact for press:
Jana Mwangi (Mesikova)
E-mail: mwangij@amires.eu
www.inscope-project.eu

“This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 731671”.

€100B proposed for the upcoming EU Famework Programme

A € 100 billion budget has been proposed for the upcoming EU framework research and innovation programme (so-called Horizon Europe), which constitutes an increase of €27 billion compared to the current Horizon 2020 programme. This proposed budget includes €97.6 billion for the upcoming Horizon Europe programme and €2.7 for Euratom nuclear research programme for years 2021 – 2027. The total budget could even increase if Switzerland, Israel, Norway and the United Kingdom join the programme as well. The UK already expressed its interest to take part in the new EU programme. Modifications to the final figure are expected before a unanimous agreement by EU’s member states and an approval by the Parliament are reached. One of the key topics to discuss will be how to fill in the budgetary gap after exiting of UK.

GDPR and EU research

The General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) entered into force in May 2016 and will apply across EU Member States as of 25 May 2018. It also applies to any type of scientific research that uses personal data, including studies in (bio)medicine, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities. It affects EU researchers, who need to be able to collect, process, and re-process personal data and collaborate internationally. The Regulation includes exemptions from several general requirements for scientific research and when it comes to freedom of expression in an academic context. For more information about rules for the protection of personal data inside and outside EU click HERE.

SmartEEs 1st cut-off evaluation process ongoing

The 1^st cut-off for submission of application experiment proposals expired on 19 March, and the evaluation process of submitted proposals is still ongoing. Stay tuned for more information about the results of the selection process which will soon be published here.

If you are a start-up, an SME or a Mid-cap and if you have an idea of how to integrate flexible electronics technologies provided by SmartEEs consortium into novel end-products, you can still apply until the expiry of the 2^nd cut-off date – 20 July. Please note that SmartEEs will not support the development of your technologies or research activities, but the integration of existing technologies of involved research teams (RTOs), as described in the Marketplace, into your end-products.

Good luck!

Q-AIR project: leading European innovations for glass façades

Q-Air is a unique single skin glass façade that offers all the performance and benefits of an active double skin façade. A premium unitized glass curtain wall system, Q-Air uses an innovative, multi-chamber insulating core, which delivers exceptional energy efficiency, living and working comfort, aesthetics and economic benefits.

Q-Air represents one of the leading European innovations, which is underlined by being selected and supported by Horizon 2020 programme (GA No. 737757), a Fast Track to Innovation Pilot (FTIP) scheme. An innovation project Q-Air: Sustainable Prefabricated Glass Façade with Performance Exceeding State-of-the-art Glass Façades of five consortium partners Trimo, Kohlbecker Gesamtplan, ZAG, Cantori and Skandinaviska Glassystem is dealing with the innovative sustainable glass facade Q-Air and its broad positive impacts across architecture, building industry, environment and society.

More information about the Q-Air Transparent, Opaque and Combination Unit prototypes is available in the Façade category of the EffiBUILDING database.

AMIRES experienced printed electronics at LOPEC 2018 in Munich, Germany

Lopec is a meeting place for all the important players from printed electronics community. AMIRES team had a pleasure to exhibit at Lopec this year, presenting the latest results and funding opportunities of SmartEEs, InSCOPE and Lyteus, the three H2020 projects related to the flexible electronics technologies.

Visitors to our booth could discover some remarkable solutions of printed electronics technologies and benefit from the conversation with lead partners present at the stand.

SmartEEs team presented their open call for the integration of flexible electronics technologies into novel products and encouraged potential applicants to apply for funding. For all those companies that already have a prototype, InSCOPE is a great choice providing scaling-up services for H-TOLAE-enabled new features. The greatest eye-catcher was Lyteus, specialized in promoting flexibility of OLED lighting and showcasing plastic integrated products.

Several interactive activities, such as a presentation from the Commission and a cocktail party were organized at our booth. Mr. Henri Hajbenbach, the EU Project officer, revealed that the EC supported Flexible and Large Area Electronics projects with more than 300M € of contribution over the past 13 years.

During the two days of Lopec AMIRES had a chance to explore interesting new ways on how printed electronics and hybrid manufacturing of integrated smart systems are changing the future. Here are some of the takeaways from this world’s leading trade fair.

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology exhibited glasses with organic solar cells integrated into the lenses. The glasses display temperature and sunlight intensity. From the most modern technologies, the thinnest and most flexible electronics, the LG caught our attention with a 4.5 mm thick OLED TV. CuteCircuit, a UK based company, showcased a handbag that was not only beautiful but also interactive and transformable. It is app-controlled with display text, Tweets, and animations.

LOPEC is, indeed, a one-stop – shop for creativity and turning interesting and daring ideas into reality. See you next time LOPEC.

AMIplexus: a tool for innovation decisions, success and updates

Finding new cooperation or business partners? Scouting for new technology? Fast overview in any R&D domain? Those are the most performed searches in AMIplexus performed by AMIRES, but also by AMIPLEXUS subscribed clients, including among others: Max Planck Society (Germany), VTT (Finland), CSEM (Switzerland), EPIC (European Photonics Industry Consortium), Don Gnocchi Foundation (Italy), CYRIC – Business Innovation Center (Cyprus). Ask us what AMIplexus can do for you, get 15 min introduction and 24 hours access for free!

But we don’t have crossed arms with this success, we are committed to continually improve and upgrade our AMIPLEXUS PLATFORM . Recently we have included the most up-to-date information for the Eurostars (March 15th 2018) and Eureka (April 15th 2018) funding programmes.

Users can visualize Eurostars data with inclusion of both the “Type of organization” and “Country” categories differentiated by differing colours, which was not available in previous versions. Currently for the Eureka program, this colour differentiation feature works for the “Country” category.

Moreover, for the Horizon 2020 dataset the users were able to search information relating to various Topics, Calls and even Funding Schemes. In a similar fashion, with the current updates on Eurostars and Eureka programmes, the users are able to filter their searches on either Technology areas and / or Market areas which are analogous to “Topics” and “Calls” found within the H2020 programme.

To demonstrate the applicability of AMIplexus platform we have been also publishing a series of reports and targeted analysis on various relevant technological areas. The technological analysis cover trending topics such as: Photovoltaics, Spectral Imaging, Autonomous Vehicles, Regenerative Medicine , Photonic Integrated Circuits, Collaborative Robots , Smart Factories and recently Flexible, Wearable and Organic Electronics.

MAKE YOUR INNOVATION DECISIONS WITH AMIPLEXUS!!

MEDILIGHT Smart System for Wound Therapy in EC Newsletter

The European project MEDILIGHT aspired to develop a medical device which uses proven therapeutic effects of visible light to enhance the self-healing process and to monitor the status and history of the wound during therapy. As the project is in its final months, finalizing validation of the prototype, the project’s success story was featured in European Commission’s Electronics newsletter. Click HERE to find out more about what MEDILIGHT has achieved. AMIRES, being responsible for project management and dissemination, is proud to be a member of the MEDILIGHT success team.

Flexible, Wearable and Organic Electronics projects within H2020

Flexible electronics also known as flex electronics as well as wearable electronics, printed electronics and organic electronics and/or organic semiconductors are emerging technologies driving markets in the areas that require flexibility and stretchability in the functionality of end products.

Previously, in Horizon 2020 programme around 56 projects have been funded in technological areas involving flexible, wearable, printed and/or organic electronics. Out of the 56 projects, eight are funded through Innovation Action scheme, six through Research and Innovation Action scheme, nineteen through Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, seventeen via European Research Council, five through the SME schemes and one project was funded through Coordination and Support Actions. Even though most projects to date were commenced in the year 2016, more funding was dedicated to Flex electronics and organic electronics in the year 2015.

Private companies involved in more than one project are in this technological field are AMIRES s.r.o (Czech Republic), FlexEnable (UK), M-SOLV LTD (UK), Silvaco Europe Ltd (UK) and Siemens Healthcare (Germany). Among the RTOs, the main players are CEA (France), IMEC (Belgium) and Joanneum Research (Austria). Other key players in the field of flexible and wearable electronics are VTT (Finland), Max-Planck (Germany) and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece).

The various mature technologies within the projects that were previously funded via RIA and IA schemes are as outlined below:

Development of lED displays for advertisement manufacturing process combining Roll-to-Sheet and Roll-to-Roll of flexible electronics with In-mould hybrid integration of TOLAE (Thin Organic and Large Area Electronics) and photonics components – Optintegral project (IA)
demonstrate the influence of different surface enhancing and modification techniques on Carbon fibre -based materials for high value and high-performance applications including CNF-based structures for flexible electronics applications- MODCOMP project (IA)
Improving the specificity and sensitivity of flat panel X-ray detectors and more importantly advancing the safety of environment and health by establishment of a new solvent-free manufacturing process for large area hybrid-organic electronics – DiCoMo project (RIA)
Leveraging the large area and organic electronics to turn classical ceramic tile into a “multifunctional electronic luminous tile” – LUMENTILE project (RIA)
Developing a pilot line for the manufacture and system-level integration of flexible organic electronics OLEDs into products by creating an open access mode and serve customers from along the value chain with individual product designs, validation of upscaling concepts, and system-level flexible OLED integration – PI-SCALE project (IA)
Taking advantage of wearable electronics and Big Data to collect data and quantify behavioral community patterns on child and adolescent obesity. The collected data will be used to reshape policies at a regional. national and European level on obesity by having in place data-driven effectiveness predictions about specific policies on a community and the real-time monitoring of the population response – BigO project (RIA)
Moving beyond current TOLAE demonstration through a major technology jump that drives scalability towards nanoscale resolution and high-definition cost-effective printing. This will be achieved by engineering and scaling up to industrial lines, some new multifunctional high-performing inks and high-resolution roll-to-roll (R2R) process or sheet-to-sheet (S2S) processes of electronic printing of including nano-imprinting and gravure printing – ATLASS project (IA)
Acknowledging the potential of printed electronics as revolutionary to electronics industry with an annual growth rate of 32.5% and ability to regain the market share of Europe in electronics, there is need to ensure there is sufficient industrial supply of nanomaterials which are low cost, high performance., environmentally friendly and tailored for high throughput systems. Therefore, better collaboration will be enhanced and encouraged between supply chain partners to ensure nanomaterial production and nanomaterial formulations are tailored for end use applications to meet this need – INSPIRED project (IA)
Applying the concept of nanomaterials for printing application to flexible printed electronics and more specifically to printed batteries and provision of new sources of nanomaterials (for example metallic particle (Ni. Cu. Al) and layered positive active material such as LiNi1/3Mn1/3Co1/3O2 (NMC) and olivine LiFePO4) for the formulation of conductive and electrochemical inks to be used in flexible electronics – BASMATI project (IA)
Providing an open access pilot line service for Hybrid Thin Organic and Large Area Electronics (H-TOLAE) technologies capable of sampling products at industrially relevant environment (TRL6) and system prototype demonstration in operational environment (TRL 7) – InSCOPE project (IA)
Bringing flexible electronics from lab to market through the development of extremely thin, flexible and durable electronics and establishing the supply chain that allows for standardized manufacturing at the lowest cost and highest volumes of Near Field Communication (NFC) tags and cards and their printable substrates (paper, cardboard, plastic, …) for the advancement of Internet of Things and the ‘internet of games’ – PING project (RIA)
Create a technology acceleration hub dedicated to help innovative companies to access new markets and grow their business in adopting OLAE (Organic Light Advanced Electronics) technologies in new products lines. The hub is essentially an organized European innovation network dedicated to OLAE. This network seeks to advise startups, small and medium companies interested in OLAE to be more competitive through innovation and new business models- SmartEEs project (IA)
development of optoelectronic materials and devices (organic solar cells, photodetectors and image sensors as well as organic light-emitting diodes) which operate in the near infrared (NIR) region. OSNIRO –(MSCA)
reduction of the time to market of OLEDS and organic thin film transistors and circuits with fast operation. Reduction of the production costs of organic devices by enabling a fully solution processed technology coupled with reduction of design costs at circuit level through an integrated model linking molecular design to circuit operation- EXTMOS (RIA)
Modelling stability of organic phosphorescent light-emitting diodes so as to integrate various levels of theoretical materials characterization into a single software package, to streamline the research workflows in order for the calculations to be truly usable by materials engineers, complementary to experimental measurements- MOSTOPHOS (RIA)
Development of a smart, wearable system, which will provide a personalized therapy for treatment of chronic wounds using the effect of blue light – MEDILIGHT (RIA)

Aiming for new horizons in manufacturing through “smart factories”

In the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0), the integration of Internet of things (IoT), cloud computing and cognitive computing in manufacturing processes gave rise to smart factories and smart manufacturing. Smart factories comprise of fully connected and flexible systems that rely on data streaming from operation and production stream to learn and predict and consequently adjust and adapt to new demands and/or changing situations. The results are higher efficiency, increased production and decreased downtimes in manufacturing processes.

In the Horizon 2020 funding programme there is a relatively small number (12) of projects related to “smart factory”, “smart manufacturing”, “intelligent factory”, “smart production” and so on. The funding schemes supporting the twelve projects are distributed as follows: five projects were funded through the Innovation Action scheme (IA), five under the Research and Innovation Action (RIA) while one project each, was funded through Marie Curie Actions (MSCA) and SME schemes. Among the projects, the SILENSE project is the major effort within H2020 in the field of smart factories. With a budget of over 29 million euro, the SILENSE project has 30 participants in its consortium.

The most active Private entities within the “smart factories” projects are FINN-POWER OY (Finland), TTS Technology Transfer Systems Srl (Italy), and Continental Automotive GmbH (Germany). Other key organisations are TNO (Netherlands), TU Chemnitz (Germany), TU Eindhoven (Netherlands), IMEC (Belgium) and CEA (France).The insights on the various mature technological efforts from projects funded through the Innovation Action and Research and Innovation Action schemes are as follows:

Development of new generation Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems for detecting and thwarting threats targeting industrial installations. This system holistically combines multiple layers comprising of a monitoring layer for traffic probes, a control and coordination layer for gathering and consolidating heterogeneous data from different and remote probes, a decision and analysis layer and finally a human-machine layer that present system behavior to the human end user in a simplistic manner – SCISSOR project (RIA)
Development and demonstration of workplace solutions that support the inclusion of increasing elements of knowledge work on the factory floor by empowering workers on the shop floor with smart factory ICT infrastructure – FACTS4WORKERS (IA)
Technology fostering for SMEs by creating a methodological and technical framework to allow adaptation of robotic solutions and putting in place infrastructures and environments that will act as clustering points for selected application areas in manufacturing and for product lifecycle management – HORSE (IA).
Provision of technology and infrastructure to enable Reconfiguration as a Service for dynamic smart factory systems and manufactured smart products that take advantage of cloud-based services and computing power to continually optimise the performance of manufacturing systems and products with respect to key performance characteristics including throughput, power consumption, utilization, maintenance and other factors – SAFIRE (RIA)
Developing simulation methodologies and multidisciplinary tools for the design. engineering and management of CPS-based (Cyber-Physical Systems) Factories. These efforts are aimed at strategically supporting production-related activities during all the phases of the factory life-cycle, from the integrated design of the product-process- production system, through the optimization of the running factory, and finally through to the dismissal/reconfiguration phase – MAYA (RIA)
Supporting the development of increased automation and increased customization in smart factories by encouraging flexible and adaptive work organization is crucial both for productivity and work satisfaction. This will be achieved by developing adaptation solutions with which people with different skills. capabilities and preferences can be engaged. motivated and productive members of the work community in manufacturing industries – Factory2Fit (RIA)
With smart homes and smart factories in mind, develop smart acoustic technologies and ultrasound intended for Human to Machine and Machine to Machine Interfaces by applying acoustics a touchless activation and control mechanism and developing different smart acoustic technology blocks (hardware, software and system level) and integrating these blocks at system level – SILENSE (RIA)
Laser-based Additive Manufacturing (LBAM) lacks competitiveness in terms of (i) lack of integration with production planning systems which hinders process traceability and resource optimisation and (ii) the need for human intervention, especially in post-processing operations. Thus, a multiprocess production cell will be developed which integrates cutting-edge LBAM machines and ICT innovations produce a fully finished product from the incoming raw material – HyproCell (IA)
Demonstrate a set of integrated tools for the rapid and autonomous reconfiguration of agile production systems, both at operational as well as managerial levels, integrated with the existing production planning and scheduling tools. These next-generation flexible production systems and the proposed set of enabling ICT tools will allow a rapid and cost-efficient reaction to dynamic market changes, also in small-lot production contexts, reducing the efforts needed to switch between product types and production quantities – ReCaM (IA)

The relevant open and forthcoming calls on smart factories are as follows:
DT-ICT-01-2019: Smart Anything Everywhere
DT-ICT-02-2018: Robotics – Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH)
DT-ICT-06-2018: Coordination and Support Activities for Digital Innovation Hub network
DT-ICT-07-2018-2019: Digital Manufacturing Platforms for Connected Smart Factories
DT-ICT-10-2018-19: Interoperable and smart homes and grids
DT-ICT-11-2019: Big data solutions for energy
DT-ICT-13-2019: Digital Platforms/Pilots Horizontal Activities

ULTRAPLACAD Newsletter n. 3

The ULTRAPLACAD Newsletter n.3 contains the description of the ULTRAPLACAD industrial prototype and of the methods developed in the project for the chip mass production. ULTRAPLACAD partners describe in the Newsletter the achievements obtained for the microRNA detection, the DNA recognition, and the surface functionalization.

The ULTRAPLACAD Newsletters aim at maintaining the visibility of the project, create awareness and expectations regarding the final results and inform the target audience about advances made in the project. Please, for more information visit www.ultraplacad.eu!

Cybersecurity Projects within H2020

Cyber-attacks and cybercrimes are rising threats to a diverse infrastructure including government, financial, industrial and technological. To counter this trend, focus on cybersecurity has also been enhanced, and various technologies have been proposed, developed and deployed within Horizon 2020 funded projects. The following insights are an overview of projects funded within H2020 and are related to cyber-attacks, cybercrime, cyber surveillance, cyber risks, cyber security, cyber terrorism and identity theft.

In this area of cyber security and for collaborative projects, the key players with more than one project involvement are KU Leuven (Belgium) and ISCOM (Italy). The projects within this technological domain are funded under innovation and action (7 projects), research and innovation action (5 projects), Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (2 projects), Coordination and Support Actions (one project), European Research Council (one project) and a majority of them are funded under the SME funding scheme (11 projects).

The following insights will focus mainly on IA and RIA funded projects that provide mature technology:

The SCISSOR project (funded within RIA scheme) aims to develop new generation Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems for detecting and thwarting threats targeting industrial installations. This system holistically combines multiple layers comprising of a monitoring layer for traffic probes, a control, and coordination layer for gathering and consolidating heterogeneous data from different and remote probes, a decision and analysis layer and finally a human-machine layer that present system behavior to the human end user in a simplistic manner. Project PROTECTIVE (funded through IA scheme) focuses on increasing awareness among European organizations on the threats posed to their operations by enhancing the computer security incident response team’s (CSIRT) threat awareness through improved security monitoring and increased sharing of threat intelligence between organizations and ranking critical threat alerts based on the potential damage the attack can inflict on the organizations. Another IA funded project, C3ISP, based on a paradigm of collect, analyze, inform and react, will leverage on information sharing through a flexible and controllable manner inside a collaborative multi-domain environment to improve detection of cyber threats and response capabilities.

As mentioned, cyber-attacks do target transportation infrastructure and systems, and rail is as prone to these attacks as any other installation. In the project X2Rail-1 (RIA funded), one of the goals is to develop new cybersecurity systems dedicated to railways to ensure security among all connected signaling and control systems. With small businesses in mind, project FORTIKA (IA funded) is tailored towards minimizing exposure of small businesses to attacks and empower them to respond appropriately to cyber risks. This would be achieved by creating a resilient overall cyber security solution that can be easily tailored and adjusted to the versatile and dynamically changing needs of small businesses. Project COMPCAT, also IA funded, addresses the needs of public administrators (PAs) faced with a growing risk of cyber threats but hampered by technological, organizational and structural issues to efficiently improve their cybersecurity level. The project will provide the PAs with tools that are characterized by a high degree of usability by non-IT experts and automation and intended for risk assessment, education, monitoring and knowledge sharing.

Project WISER funded under IA has provided SMEs with pre-packaged risk management solution for SMEs, and Risk Management Platform as a Service (RMPaaS). These SMEs often lack the resources and expertise to make security a top priority and establish a strong IT security posture and thus the WISER’s analytical tools are simple and easy to use, facilitating security managers in understanding complex systems. Project ARIES, a RIA project, will leverage virtual and mobile IDs cryptographically derived from strong eID documents in order to prevent identity-theft and related crimes in the physical (e.g. an airport) and virtual (e.g eCommerce) domains. The project will provide a global approach for ID Ecosystem in Europe to address European-specific concerns to improve identity, trust and security, and better support the law enforcement to address the new threats to cybersecurity. By innovatively integrating social and computational sciences, project PROTON (RIA funded) aims at improving existing knowledge on the processes of recruitment to organized crime and terrorist networks and provide a support tool for policymakers at the international, national and local levels. Realizing the need for efficient and effective protective measures against ever-evolving cyber threats and by taking advantage of Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) technologies, project SHIELD (IA funded), seeks to provide a universal solution for dynamically establishing and deploying virtual security infrastructures into ISP and corporate networks.

The SMESEC consortium (IA funded) proposes the development of a cost-effective framework composed of specific cyber-security tool-kit to support SMEs in managing network information security risks and threats, as well as in identifying opportunities for implementing secure innovative technology in the digital market. In order to improve levels of collaboration between cooperative and regulatory approaches to information sharing SAINT project that is RIA funded proposes to advance measurement approaches and methodologies of the metrics of cybercrime. This would be achieved through constructing a framework of a new empirical science that challenges traditional approaches and fuses evidence-based practices with more established disciplines. Specifically, novel and experimental economics will aid SAINT in designing new methodologies for the development of an ongoing and searchable public database of cybersecurity indicators and open source intelligence.

The relevant forthcoming H2020 calls in cybersecurity are as follows:

Increasing productivity with collaborative robots: H2020 insights

Collaborative robots or Cobots (co-bots/ co-robot) are increasingly becoming popular and mainstream especially in manufacturing industries and with SMEs due to their affordability. Growth in their application is mainly being driven by the following industries: automotive, aeronautic, metal and machining, furniture and equipment, food and beverage, as well as plastic and polymers. These robots are designed to be safe to work alongside humans owing to their safety features that are designed to reduce the risk of harm. The features include rounded design and their force-limited joints that sense forces due to impact and quickly react by dissipating these forces, therefore, averting danger to humans and destruction to surfaces and property.

Within the Horizon 2020, there are about 20 projects related to collaborative robots and robotics. Five of the projects are funded by the Innovation Action (IA) scheme, nine via the Research and Innovation Action (RIA) scheme, six are funded through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) scheme, two projects within the SME Instrument and one project each funded through European Research Council (ERC) sand Coordination and support action (CSA) schemes, respectively. In the H2020 programme, the key players active in the collaborative robots’ technological area are TNO (Netherlands), Technalia (Spain), Fraunhofer (Germany), Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), UNIMORE (Italy), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), CNRS (France), Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italy), KU Leuven (Belgium), TU Dresden (Germany), and IMEC (Belgium).

Some of the innovations from projects funded through RIA and IA funding schemes are highlighted in this insight. These include:

Building collaborative aerial robotic workers with the capability to autonomously conduct infrastructure inspection and maintenance tasks – AEROWORKS (RIA).
Technology fostering for SMEs by creating a methodological and technical framework to allow adaptation of robotic solutions and putting in place infrastructures and environments that will act as clustering points for selected application areas in manufacturing and for product lifecycle management – HORSE (IA).
Developing new automation concepts for aircraft assembly by employing innovative technologies such as collaborative robots, movable robotics platforms, grippers, compact and lightweight robots. This is aimed at achieving high production rates and reduced costs with maximum production flexibility – ACOTAAL (CS2-IA).
In the niche of consumer entertainment robotics, a humanoid robot will be developed. This robot will have the capabilities of interacting and engaging with the public autonomously and naturally in the dynamic environments of a public shopping mall. – MuMMER (RIA)
Creating an integrated system for collaborative robotics which can deliver kits, tools, parts and hold pieces on the factory floor during assembling processes – ColRobot (IA)
Developing a hybrid work cell for inspection purposes with advanced robotic capabilities while acknowledging the cost implication of fully automating industrial operation and leveraging on cost-efficient human-robot cooperation – CRO-INSPECT (CS2-RIA)
Deliver the most advanced but flexible space autonomous system suitable for single and/or collaborative space robotic missions which demand robust operations with adaptable levels of autonomy ERGO (RIA)
In order to address ethical concerns on the future of robotics including job replacement, there is need to offer proactive steps towards ethical and responsible robots by suggesting radical changes in current robot design procedures – REELER (RIA)
Improving the interaction of human and robots in the workplace by endowing robots with the ability to control physical collaboration through intentional interaction. This will be achieved via force and motion tracking technology, robot learning using cognitive models of human behavior in collaborative tasks and innovative technology for helping humans through predictive physical collaboration – An.Dy (RIA)
As a continuation of previous projects (COMET, SAPHARI, and poliMATIC) develop Symbiotic Human-Robot Solutions for Complex Surface Finishing Operations to automated polishing techniques in manufacturing processes aimed at complex shaped metallic surfaces – SYMPLEXITY (IA)
Equipping a collaborative and inherently safe assembly robot with cutting-edge sensory and cognitive abilities as well as reasoning abilities required to plan and execute an assembly task for easier and quicker adaptability and installation in an assembly line – SARAFun (RIA)
With the rise in labor costs, especially in automotive and the aeronautics industrial sectors, mobile dual arms robots will be created with abilities to perceive their environment and through reasoning, cooperation with each other and with other production resources including human operators and even be able to navigate in the shop floor and utilize dexterous tooling to perform multiple operations – THOMAS (IA).

Forthcoming Horizon 2020 calls related to robotics are:

New EU Director-General for Research and Innovation

As a part of changes in European Commission’s senior management positions, which included replacements of the Directors-General for climate action, education and employment and others, Jean-Eric Paquet has replaced Robert-Jan Smits at the position of the Director-General for Research and Innovation. Jean-Eric Paquet is a French national and career civil servant, who has served as one of the tree Deputy Secretaries-General of the Juncker Commission. Within his 23 year experience in the European Commission, Jean-Eric Paquet has been involved in European Commission’s proposals for deepening the Economic and Monetary Union and for Industrial Policy Strategy. In view of the task to reach a consensus on 9th Framework Programme, Paquet’s decisions about the DG internal management could either consolidate or complicate this task. Robert-Jan Smits will become a senior adviser to the European Political Strategy Centre, the Commission’s in-house think tank.

EffiBUILDING has established a cooperation with EXCEED Project

Due to the common vision and mission, a strong cooperation with the EXCEED Project has been established.

The ExcEED project (which stands for European Energy Efficient building district Database: from data to information to knowledge) aims to create a European database for measured and qualitative data on beyond the state-of-the-art buildings and districts. Key performance indicators (KPIs) will be developed to quantify and benchmark the energy efficiency and the environmental quality at building and district level.

News about EffiBUILDING have been periodically published in the Exceed website. EffiBUILDING community will be updated on the development of the Exceed project.

H2020 Insights: Advances in Photonic Integrated Circuits

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) go by many synonyms including integrated photonics, silicon photonics, photonic ICs and so on. These devices use light to perform optical functions by incorporating numerous optical devices. In PICs, information signals are imposed on optical wavelengths typically in the visible spectrum or near infrared region. Various devices found on a PIC may include optical amplifiers, optical lasers, receivers, waveguides, detectors, gratings, multiplexers, de-multiplexers, and attenuators among others.

With the growth of photonics, over 40 projects specific to either integrated photonics, silicon photonics, photonic ICs or photonic integrated circuits have been funded within the Horizon 2020 (H2020) programme. The most involved private companies in this technological area are IBM Research GMBH (Switzerland), XIO Photonics BV (Netherlands), Lionix International BV (Netherlands) Berenschot Groep BV (Netherlands), Ericsson Telecomunicazioni (Italy), and ams AG (Austria). Other key players involved in PICs projects are IMEC (Belgium), Fraunhoffer (Germany), III-V LAB (France) VTT (Finland), CEA (France), University College Cork (Ireland), Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands), University of Ghent (Belgium), Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (Greece) and European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC).

Efforts to provide mature technology are found within projects funded by Innovation Action and Research and Innovation Action funding schemes. Some of these efforts and technologies include:

Provision of a one-stop-shop to the European SMEs to enable them to move their PIC based R&D technologies from the laboratories to the market by bridging missing gaps in the value chain, from assembly & packaging, through to equipment optimization, test and application demonstration (PIXAPP project, funding 15 million euros).
Exploiting the powerful PIC technology to fabricate 5G broadband wireless networks for dense, ultra-dense and Hot-Spot area use (5G-PHOS Project).
Development of photonic needles for spectral tissue sensing as diagnostic tools for screening tumours (InSPECT project).
Leveraging advances in complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) to develop a novel CMOS compatible low-loss silicon nitride waveguide based PIC technology to be used in in the field of optical coherence tomography (OCT) for ophthalmology (OCTCHIP project).
development of new wafer-scale technology for direct and intimate attachment of III-V Indium-Phosphide (InP) photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and BiCMOS electronic chips (ICs) to be used in data transmission (WIPE project).
Integrating microwave engineering and photonics by developing a disruptive photonic integration platform that will enable the development of very large scale photonic integrated circuits (VLSPICs) with cascaded stages of tunable structures for analog and digital signal processing that allow functionalities in microwave systems that are complex or totally impossible in the microwave domain (HAMLET project).
Creating a universal memory by combining opto-magnetism and spintronics with electronic and photonic integration technologies. This novel technology will be in the form of a spintronic-photonic memory chip demonstrator with 3 orders of magnitude higher write speed and 2 orders of magnitude lower energy consumption (SPICE project).
Development of a scalable thermally-enabled 3D integrated optoelectronic platform that can meet the explosion in data traffic growth within ICT. This would be achieved by heterogeneously integrating micro-thermoelectric coolers (μTEC) and micro-fluidics (μFluidics) with optoelectronic devices within the Thermally Integrated Smart Photonics Systems (TIPS project).
In order to address the risks if cardiovascular diseases by rapid and early detection, the CARDIS project seeks to demonstrate the concept of a mobile and low-cost device based on a silicon photonics integrated laser Doppler vibrometer and validate the concept for the screening of arterial stiffness, detection of stenosis and heart failure.
The TOP HIT project is aggressively developing the micro-Transfer-Printing technique by integrating electronics and silicon photonics components for the magnetic and communication industries.
In ROAM project, the orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes of light for communications and networking are being investigated for increasing optical fibre transmission capacity. These OAM components are essentially built on silicon photonics technology
The DIMENSION project is establishing an integrated electro-optical platform that extends the silicon (Bi)CMOS and silicon photonics platform with III-V photonic functionality. This offers great opportunities for new innovative devices and functions at the chip-level.
The Teraboard project is building a full intra data center photonic platform for intraboard,intrarack and intra data center optical communications. This platform will be based on ultra-high density and scalable bandwidth optical interconnectivity with low data losses, low energy cost and reduced manufacturing costs.
The L3MATRIX project provides novel technological innovations in the fields of silicon photonics (SiP) and 3D device integration to cater for higher bandwidth needs in data centers.
The PIX4life project, with a funding of 10 million euros, is putting in place a state of the art silicon nitride (SiN) photonics pilot line for life science applications in the visible range which will be accessible as an incentive for product development by a broad range of industrial customers.
By implementing quantum simulation on integrated photonic processors, the QUCHIP project will develop new photonic technologies. ranging from on-chip sources of single photons to complex waveguide architectures and on-chip detectors
In order to bring photonic reservoir computing to maturation, the PHRESCO project will design a novel reservoir computing chip expected to be a major breakthrough in the field

The following is the funding distribution across the projects in the photonics integrated circuits field.

Companies in the photonics industry which are interested in H2020 funding should watch out for these open and forthcoming calls:

ICT-03-2018-2019: Photonics Manufacturing Pilot Lines for Photonic Components and Devices
ICT-04-2018: Photonics based manufacturing, access to photonics, datacom photonics and connected lighting
ICT-05-2019: Application driven Photonics components
DT-ICT-04-2020: Photonics Innovation Hubs

For more insights on H2020, LIFE, Eureka and Eurostars programmes, kindly subscribe to our AMIPLEXUS MULTIDATASET PLATFORM.

Chronic Wound Healing by MEDILIGHT Blue Light on RTS TV

A report on the healing effect of blue light was featured on RTS TV! The report shows a personalized, light-based dressing for chronic wounds, which has been developed as a result of the MEDILIGHT project, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 644267.

Chronic wounds which fail to follow the typical healing process or timeframe are notoriously challenging to treat. Their burden is significant, affecting over 40 million patients and costing healthcare systems €40 billion annually. Urgo Medical aspired to create a dressing able to both stimulate self-healing with light and adapt to the individual patient, thus going beyond existing non-personalized nanoparticle-based solutions.

Urgo worked with 6 more partners in the European project MEDILIGHT to translate the technology behind light stimulation treatments delivered in hospitals into a smart wearable system for the personalized light treatment of chronic wounds at home. Their attention was focused on blue light’s ability to stimulate ani-bacterial effects and accelerate healing.

Enjoy the TV report in French!

H2020 Pushing the Human Health Frontiers Through Regenerative Medicine

Regenerative medicine develops ways to regrow, repair and or replace damaged and diseased tissues, cells, or organs. This is mainly achieved through the application of therapeutic cells, transplantation of stem cells, artificial organs production with an aim of restoring normal functionality.

As per analysis made to date, about 55 projects in the filed of regenerative medicine have been funded with Horizon 2020, with a majority having one player and funded within ERC, MSCA and SME funding schemes. In the below picture, the project with highest number of participants relates to communication of stem cells research (Eurostemcell). This consortium unites 33 partner institutions which collectively represents over 400 stem cell research groupings across Europe with a common goal of providing trusted high-quality information on stem cells accessible to citizens and stakeholders across Europe.

Key organizations within the field of regenerative medicine are CEA (France), Aarhus University (Denmark), Linköping University (Sweden), Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain), Technical University of Denmark (Denmark) and Leiden University Medical Center (Netherlands).

These projects foster intersectoral knowledge transfer through collaboration between academic and industrial participants to push regenerative medicine frontiers. Some of projects aim at developing guidelines to reduce the development and clinical testing timeframes to expedite the process of moving novel regenerative technology from the bench to the bedside.

Research focus within the regenerative medicine domain revolves around a variety of key areas. To fully elucidate mechanisms involved in the differentiation, self-renewal and mechanotransduction, many studies are being carried on embryonic stem cells (ESCs), mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) and hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) from various organisms as well as human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). To achieve this understanding of cellular and molecular interactions, highly sensitive and real-time characterization is carried out using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Raman microspectroscopy (RMS) and more so computer models. Some efforts monitor the cell-substrate interactions at nanolevels in order to fabricate precise surface topographies through state-of-the-art nanofabrication methods.

In other projects, the goal is to identify methods and materials for protecting stem cells from unfavorable differentiation for example stretch-induced differentiation. Examples of these materials are conductive polymer (CP) materials for the external stimulation of stem cells. There is also the development of new classes of materials such as artificial biomaterials that mimic functionalities of the natural cell environments or metamaterials with nanoparticles whose functionality can be remotely controlled by external magnetic fields. In terms of drugs, targeting tools and carriers specific to certain tissues and pathology are being developed for example GAG-binding enhanced transduction (GET). Novel bioengineering technologies including organ-on-chip, micro/nano fabrication and biomimetics are being developed while photon laser polymerization is already in the pipeline for controlling the geometry of the synthetic cell niches.

As seen in the below picture, the projects with the highest funding are MECHANO-CONTROL and INTENS. Both have funding over 7 million euros with 7 and 9 partners, respectively. The MECHANO-CONTROL project aims to understand and control cellular mechanics from the molecular to the organism scale, which will have high applicability in oncology, regenerative medicine, and biomaterials. On the other hand, the INTENS project has an objective to deliver a functional bowel reconstruction to patients with Short Bowel Syndrome (SBS) through an autologous tissue engineering strategy.

The current Horizon 2020 Work Programme for years 2018 – 2020 brings about several opportunities for funding of projects within the regenerative medicine area. These include:

NMBP-22-2018: Osteoarticular tissues regeneration (RIA)
NMBP-21-2020: Custom-made biological scaffolds for specific tissue regeneration and repair (RIA)
DT-NMBP-23-2020: Next generation organ-on-chip (RIA)
DT-NMBP-04-2020: Open Innovation Test Beds for bio-based nano-materials and solutions (IA)
DT-NMBP-06-2020: Open Innovation Test Beds for nano-pharmaceuticals production (IA)

Shall you wish to find out more, click HERE to watch a recording of European Technology Platform for Nanomedicine Webinar on Horizon 2020 funding opportunities for Regenerative Medicine (2018-2020).

AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES: the transport of the future

Autonomous or self-driving vehicles are the next generation of vehicles aimed at providing cleaner and safer mode of transport and revolutionize the way we experience travel. Thus, this topic has gained much traction amongst car manufacturers and in the automotive industry.

In terms of innovation, research is focused towards creating guidelines for cross-cultural road upgrading and passengers and road users’ safety, development of algorithms, simulations, models as well as Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems, navigation satellite systems, state of the art sensors and communication networks. Furthermore, some projects seek to leverage the applications of Big Data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things technologies to advance autonomous vehicles. These innovations should facilitate the seamless integration of machine-human interactions (in case of semi-automation), infrastructure design aimed at uninterrupted and efficient traffic flow as well as safe interactions between conventional and automated models considering shared infrastructure.

The below network shows the network of key players in the autonomous vehicles field within H2020 whereby the clusters represent the various projects. The largest cluster corresponds to the SCOTT project with 52 partners including Brazil and a funding of 39 million Euros. The SCOTT is geared towards the provision of wireless sensor & actuator networks and communication in mobility and smart infrastructure.

There are currently about 15 projects related to autonomous vehicles and the cumulative amount of funding invested in projects related to autonomous vehicles is well over 65 million euros with well over 70% invested in projects that commenced in 2017. Private companies pioneering the autonomous/unmanned vehicles research in the H2020 include Tomtom Development Gmbh, Dynniq Nederland Bv, Tass International Mobility Center Bv, ERTICO-ITS Europe, Hyundai Motor Europe Technical Center Gmbh. Among the research centers and universities, the leaders in autonomous vehicles include Fraunhofer, CEA, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Centro Ricerche Fiat (Italy), VTI (Sweden), VeDecoM (France), Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (National Technical University of Athens), Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (Greece).

AMIPLEXUS in 2017 EPIC activity report

The European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC), has acquired the license to the AMIPLEXUS tool as reported in the EPIC-Activity-Report-2017 (page 11). This allows all employees of EPIC member companies to have free access to AMIPLEXUS, get an overview of the already funded projects, their key players and technologies funded. AMIPLEXUS provides unique insights and information in a speed and extent that is not available from any other existing engines.

A newly released AMIPLEXUS MULTIDATASET platform is available to anybody on subscription basis starting from 299 €/year. Search in over 20.000 projects funded within the European Union (H2020, Eureka, Eurostars, LIFE).

MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR INNOVATION DECISIONS WITH AMIPLEXUS!!

Horizon 2020 Cooperation Offers

Are you looking for partners or ideas for the upcoming Horizon 2020 calls? If so, check the below cooperation offers of our partners.

Idea	Topic	Proposer	Link
Removal of hazardous substances and contaminants by specifically modified particles and automated screen printed electrodes (SPE) for detection of contaminants from different types of environments	CE-SC5-01-2018 Methods to remove hazardous substances and contaminants from secondary raw materials	Mendel University in Brno, CZ	HERE
Nanobiotechnologies based on nanoparticles supported by protein cages with catalytic and enzyme-mimetic activity	BIOTEC-04-2018 New biotechnologies for environmental remediation SC1-BHC-09-2018 Innovation platforms for advanced therapies of the future	Mendel University in Brno, CZ	HERE
Fluorescent nanomaterials for optical detection	SFS-05-2018/2019/2020 New and emerging risks in plant health	Mendel University in Brno, CZ	HERE
Use of advanced nanomaterials for ensuring sterility and antimicrobiality of cover materials in agricultural practice	SFS-11-2019 Anti-microbials and animal production	Mendel University in Brno, CZ	HERE
Use of advanced nanomaterials for ensuring sterility and antimicrobial properties of cover materials	NMBP-21-2020 Custom-made biological scaffolds for specific tissue regeneration and repair	Mendel University in Brno, CZ	HERE
Design and manufacture of precision components from ultra-hard materials such as advanced ceramics and synthetic sapphire and ruby for the medical market (e.g. IVD, pistons, valves, implants, fully ceramic dental implants), electronics, wear resistant parts for automotive or bearings used in energy generation, hydrogen storage, sensors, actuators, filters or for creative industry (jewelry)	DT-NMBP-01-2018: Open Innovation Hubs for Lightweight nano-enabled multifunctional materials and components (IA) DT-NMBP-09-2018: Accelerating the uptake of materials modelling software (IA) NMBP-22-2018: Osteo-articular tissues regeneration (RIA) CE-NMBP-26-2018: Smart plastic materials with intelligent recycling properties by design (RIA) DT-NMBP-03-2019: Open Innovation Hubs for nano-enabled surfaces and membranes (IA) DT-NMBP-19-2019: Advanced materials for additive manufacturing (IA) LC-NMBP-32-2019: Smart materials, systems and structures for energy harvesting (RIA) DT-FoF-07-2020: Reliable and accurate assembly of micro parts (RIA) NMBP-21-2020: Custom-made biological	Ceramaret SA, CH	HERE
Development of a decision-making software to allow simplification in agricultural management, optimization of resources (including personnel) and maximization of harvest with optimized cost	SFS-06-2018-2020 Stepping up integrated pest management RUR-02-2018 Socio-economic impacts of digitisation of agriculture and rural areas RUR-04-2018-2019: Analytical tools and models to support policies related to agriculture and food CE-RUR-08-2018-2019-2020 Closing nutrient cycles, B. [2018, 2019, 2020] Bio-based fertilizers DT-RUR-12-2018: ICT Innovation for agriculture – Digital Innovation Hubs for Agriculture DT-RUR-13-2018: Enabling the farm advisor community to prepare farmers for the digital age DT-RUR-14-2018 Digital solutions and e-tools to modernise the CAP ICT-05-2019: Application driven Photonics components ICT–11-2018-20: HPC and Big Data enabled Large-scale Test-beds and Applications DT-ICT-08-2019: Agricultural digital integration platforms	FELCO Motion SA, CH	HERE

HEREIn case of any questions please contact Martina Urbankova.

SmartEEs CALL dedicated to Integration of flexible electronics technologies is now open!

SmartEES is the European acceleration program supported by the European Commission and dedicated to help Innovative Companies access new markets and grow their business by integrating flexible electronics into products and services.

CALL OP

Stay tuned and follow us on website and social media @SmartEEsEU to learn about new opportunities offered by the SmartEEs Community you could benefit from! New Call for AEs opening soon!