Nov 21, 2006
€9 billion injection to boost European ICT research
I write this post from the cold (well, not so cold as I expected) Helsinki, where I am attending the “Information Society Technology 2006” conference.
The exhibition contains quite a lot of interesting stuff this year, from portable brain-computer interface (project PRESENCCIA) to 3D television.
Beyond applications, I am learning a lot about the opportunities for funding offered by the 7th framework program, the EU's chief instrument for funding scientific research and technological development over the period 2007 to 2013.
The good news is that the EU plans to invest over €9 billion in research on information and communications technologies. This is, by far, the largest single budget item in FP7 programme.
If you want to discover more about the ICT research to be funded under the Seventh Framework Programme you may visit the dedicated website just launched on the CORDIS platform.
A further interesting initiative is Living Lab, which aims to set up a new European innovation infrastructure where users play an active role in the innovation. The initiative was launched yesterday in Espoo, Finland.
From the infosociety website:
(20/11/2006) Living labs move research out of laboratories into real-life contexts to stimulate innovation. This allows citizens to influence research, design and product development. Users are encouraged to co-operate closely with researchers, developers and designers to test ideas and prototypes.
Functioning as Public-Private Partnerships, especially at regional and local level, living labs provide some advantages over "closed labs": They stimulate new ideas, provide concrete research challenges and allow for continuous validation of research results. At a pan-European level, a large-scale network of living labs could become a strong tool for making the innovation process of industry more efficient and dynamic by stimulating the involvement of citizens of differing cultures and societal backgrounds who can provide rich feedback in context on the use and impact of the technologies being researched.
The European Network of Living Labs is launched just as a large group of experts gathers in Finland for the IST Event 2006. Several conference sessions will explore in detail the living labs approach, and offer researchers across Europe the opportunity to become involved.
The concept has already been embraced by industry and other stakeholder organisations. Concrete examples of living labs already operating include the Helsinki Living Lab (in Arabianranta), Mobile City Bremen in Germany, the Botnia Lining Lab in Sweden and Freeband in the Netherlands.
15:25 Posted in Research institutions & funding opportunities | Permalink | Comments (0) | Tags: funding opportunities
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