7 minute read
ATTRACT
Backing new ideas for tomorrow’s economy
Europe is home to talented scientists and has a sophisticated research infrastructure, yet many new ideas with commercial potential are still not translated into practical applications. We spoke to Professor Sergio Bertolucci about how the ATTRACT project is funding disruptive research that he hopes will help create jobs and boost the European economy.
There are sophisticated research
facilities dotted across Europe, at which scientists continue to explore new ideas and develop a wide variety of innovative technologies, from nanomaterials, to quantum sensors, to self-powering cameras. However, despite the overall strength of European science, many research advances are still not translated into practical applications, an issue at the heart of the ATTRACT project. “A few years ago I was part of a group which started reflecting on how we could put together an essentially bottom-up mechanism to connect research and innovation,” outlines Sergio Bertolucci, Professor of Physics at the University of Bologna, who chairs the Independent Scientific Advisory Committee (R&D&I) of ATTRACT.
These discussions led to the formation of ATTRACT, a consortium that aims to facilitate the emergence of bottom-up breakthrough ideas co-developed by researchers and entrerpreneurs. “Essentially we established a consortium composed by major European research institutions (CERN, EMBL, ESRF, ESO, ILL, E-XFEL), EIRMA (the European Industrial Research Management Association), and two Universities particularly engaged in innovation, ESADE and AALTO,” explains Professor Bertolucci. “We than engaged in a fruitful discourse with the European Commission, which funded the project in the framework of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ”
The project is inspired to a degree by earlier analysis of how certain areas like Silicon Valley have established an environment that encourages scientific innovation and turns it into practical applications. While Europe has a strong scientific heritage and great cultural diversity, it is losing ground to global competitors, and Professor Bertolucci believes action is needed to regain it. “We need scale, funds, and more appetite for innovation and risk,” he says. The challenge here is to make better use of Europe’s vast intellectual resources, and translate Open Science into Open Innovation, where the commercial potential of new knowledge is realised. “Open Science means an ecosystem where a researcher’s idea can freely circulate, with the right balance between collaboration and competition,” explains Professor Bertolucci. “They don’t patent their findings or keep them secret, but rather make them available to the scientific community.”
ATTRACT project
This ideal of Open Science has largely been achieved within Europe, now the ATTRACT project is supporting innovative research projects, with the ultimate aim of helping bring new ideas closer to practical application and boosting the wider economy. Some 170 research projects have received funding of €100,000 within ATTRACT, all of which bring together industry and the academic sector. “These projects are collaborative,” stresses Professor Bertolucci. The priority is to fund disruptive research and back the development of radical ideas and innovations, generally at a technology readiness level (TRL) of 1-3. “Many of these projects have a potential industrial application, such as developing new sensors based on nanotechnology for use in healthcare. There are also several projects in diagnostics, with research into imaging, for both CT scans and X-rays,” continues Professor Bertolucci. “ And there are also interesting projects in robotics and in smart applications based on Artificial Intelligence”
The initial funding gave researchers the opportunity to explore and develop their ideas, after which they were asked to submit a report and conduct a presentation showing their findings. When all 170 projects have completed their deliverables, Professor Bertolucci and his colleagues will look to identify which should receive further support. “We will select a number of projects, those with the potential to proceed up to TRL 7 or even higher, or those that are particularly disruptive,” he
outlines. This funding will be significantly higher than in the first phase, into seven figures in some cases, and this could be augmented further by funding from other sources. “In phase 2 institutional investors from both the public and private sectors will be involved. This will include organisations like the European innovation fund and the European Bank, as well as representatives from private venture capital,” says Professor Bertolucci. “We will invite people from these and other organisations, as we did already in September 2020 enabling several promising follow-ups.”
Research links
A further important topic on the project’s agenda is to help build stronger links between research institutions, an important lesson that has been gleaned from analysis of Silicon Valley’s success. Researchers working in Silicon Valley, as well as in other areas associated with technological development, are typically interconnected, and so are able to build on each others’ work rather than duplicate it. “They don’t reinvent the wheel. If they know that the wheel has already been made then they take it, and they use it in their idea,” explains Professor Bertolucci. The idea is to establish a public repository, where researchers can share their ideas while still protecting their intellectual property; Professor Bertolucci says this is a difficult balance to strike. “We have to rethink how intellectual property will be dealt with in future, because it’s clear that patents, by themselves, are too rigid,” he continues.
The more immediate priority in the project is to direct funds to promising projects however, and to encourage the development of new detection and imaging technologies. A number of these projects have been hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic, so some have been given more time to continue their research. “For example there’s a project investigating a very interesting approach to improving the resolution of X-ray scanning, trying to make x-ray holography in a smart way. This was going to be tested in the UK, but it hasn’t been feasible – we hope it will be done in the near future,” says Professor
Bertolucci. The pandemic has slowed down the projects to some extent but it hasn’t stopped them, and Professor Bertolucci says this ongoing effort holds real importance to the future of the European economy. “We believe that ultimately ATTRACT will lead to the creation of high-quality jobs, and become self-sustaining,” he says.
A further round of initial funding is planned, and the hope is to establish a kind of eco-system that stimulates technical innovation and then harnesses its possibilities in the development of new products. From his position on the Scientific Advisory Commitee, Professor Bertolucci says the project has been challenging at times, but it has strengthened his faith in European science. “It has confirmed the enormous potential of Europe’s scientists and entrepreneurs. It’s amazing to see how much untapped potential there is in Europe,” he enthuses.
breAkThrough innovaTion pRogrAmme for a pan-European Detection and Imaging eCosysTem Project Objectives
European researchers are responsible for some highly innovative technology and many scientific breakthroughs, yet current mechanisms for scaling up promising ventures and bringing them to global markets are not working effectively. A number of promising start-up European companies have shifted operations to Silicon Valley to become part of a wider research community and capitalise on the commercial potential of their ideas and technology. The Attract consortium now aims to capture the value of European research and help translate it into commercial success. The consortium will back researchers from both the commercial and academic sectors in the development of detection and imaging technologies. The aim in the project is to create a model of Open Innovation that will then lead to the creation of new jobs and help spread prosperity.
Project Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 777222.
Project Partners
• Please see website for details.
Contact Details
Chair of the Independent Scientific Committee, Sergio Bertolucci Professor, University of Bologna & former scientific director at CERN T: +39 34 8818 4395 E: Sergio.Bertolucci@cern.ch W: https://attract-eu.com
Professor Sergio Bertolucci
Sergio Bertolucci is a former Pisa scholar and the former scientific director at CERN. Before joining CERN, he worked at DESY, Fermilab and Frascati. The co-author of over 370 papers, Bertolucci’s career includes roles in the KLOE and CDF experiments leading to the discovery of the top quark, and innovative instrumentation, development and leadership of the DAFNE accelerator. He was also vicepresident and a member of the Board of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics.
