News Article
Beyond the MEDEA framework
With industry driven programmes such as JESSI, MEDEA and MEDEA+, Europe’s capabilities in micro-/nanoelectronics R&D have been built up and Europe successfully managed to become a world player in a fierce competition capturing innovative domains.
MEDEA+ being one of Europe’s key-enablers for innnovation and thereby for economic growth and employment, and ending in 2008 starts thinking about its future role and perception.
MEDEA+ being one of Europe’s key-enablers for innnovation and thereby for economic growth and employment, and ending in 2008 starts thinking about its future role and perception.
With industry driven programmes such as JESSI, MEDEA and MEDEA+, Europe’s capabilities in micro-/nanoelectronics R&D have been built up and Europe successfully managed to become a world player in a fierce competition capturing innovative domains.
MEDEA+ being one of Europe’s key-enablers for innnovation and thereby for economic growth and employment, and ending in 2008 starts thinking about its future role and perception.
With more than 300 participants from all over Europe, MEDEA+ Forum 2005 held in Barcelona on November 21 and 22 had the highest attendance of visitors and partners from industry, small and medium sized companies, from universities and institutes, from Public Authorities and Ministries. In his opening speech, MEDEA+ Chairman Arthur van der Poel saw a positive balance on the past 12 months. He noted that 350 partners from 21 countries have spent almost14 000 person-years in the execution of 70 projects, whereby 34 of them have successfully ended already. He illustrated some project achievements, amongst those the 2005 – winner of the ‘Jean-Pierre Noblanc Award for Excellence’: the project Pocket Multimedia. Its results deliver excellent multimedia performance, consuming very low power whilst using multimedia processors, organic LED technology and tiny operating elements based on MEMs technology. The business perspectives are going far beyond initial expectations.
MEDEA+ activities were presented in the Poster- and Demo- sessions, where project leaders and experts presented latest achievements and technical results. Prominent keynote speakers gave their views on technical evolutions and market trends, both globally and with a particular emphasis on two very promising areas where Europe may gain importance: microtechnologies for lab-on-chip and security of the IT systems. Today, PPPs (Private-Public-Partnerships) are considered as valuable instruments to help Europe facing the incoming competitiveness challenges through increased research, development and innovation in particular within industry. Means to make it happening already exist at local/regional, national and European Community level, but the need for better collaboration of the various initiatives has been recently reactivated. MEDEA+ is actually an essential link in the chain connecting all innovative activities throughout Europe in the nanoelectronics domain.
For instance, MEDEA+ was an initial participant of European Technology Platforms (ETPs) proposed by the European commission in the Framework 7 to gather all the stakeholders in carefully selected areas. MEDEA+ is actively contributing to the set-up of ARTEMIS (Embedded Systems) and ENIAC (Nanoelectronics), the 2 ETPs closely related to MEDEA+ applications and technologies domains. The Strategic Research Agendas defined by ARTEMIS and ENIAC will serve as roadmaps for any R&D initiative in Europe. In addition, there is a growing interest for reactivating national support in the form of PPPs aiming at focusing available resources in ‘geographic local clusters’, named in France for instance ‘Poles de Competitivite’. Those will have to be networked at the European level to address global markets and MEDEA+ or its successor programme may be instrumental for that purpose.
The debate on ‘Beyond MEDEA+’ is about its actual extension and technical content, but it is already clear that the synergism between the various schemes in preparation has to be established and that the MEDEA+ community will play a vital role in ensuring a pan-European approach to make better use of Europe’s invaluable assets..
MEDEA+ being one of Europe’s key-enablers for innnovation and thereby for economic growth and employment, and ending in 2008 starts thinking about its future role and perception.
With more than 300 participants from all over Europe, MEDEA+ Forum 2005 held in Barcelona on November 21 and 22 had the highest attendance of visitors and partners from industry, small and medium sized companies, from universities and institutes, from Public Authorities and Ministries. In his opening speech, MEDEA+ Chairman Arthur van der Poel saw a positive balance on the past 12 months. He noted that 350 partners from 21 countries have spent almost14 000 person-years in the execution of 70 projects, whereby 34 of them have successfully ended already. He illustrated some project achievements, amongst those the 2005 – winner of the ‘Jean-Pierre Noblanc Award for Excellence’: the project Pocket Multimedia. Its results deliver excellent multimedia performance, consuming very low power whilst using multimedia processors, organic LED technology and tiny operating elements based on MEMs technology. The business perspectives are going far beyond initial expectations.
MEDEA+ activities were presented in the Poster- and Demo- sessions, where project leaders and experts presented latest achievements and technical results. Prominent keynote speakers gave their views on technical evolutions and market trends, both globally and with a particular emphasis on two very promising areas where Europe may gain importance: microtechnologies for lab-on-chip and security of the IT systems. Today, PPPs (Private-Public-Partnerships) are considered as valuable instruments to help Europe facing the incoming competitiveness challenges through increased research, development and innovation in particular within industry. Means to make it happening already exist at local/regional, national and European Community level, but the need for better collaboration of the various initiatives has been recently reactivated. MEDEA+ is actually an essential link in the chain connecting all innovative activities throughout Europe in the nanoelectronics domain.
For instance, MEDEA+ was an initial participant of European Technology Platforms (ETPs) proposed by the European commission in the Framework 7 to gather all the stakeholders in carefully selected areas. MEDEA+ is actively contributing to the set-up of ARTEMIS (Embedded Systems) and ENIAC (Nanoelectronics), the 2 ETPs closely related to MEDEA+ applications and technologies domains. The Strategic Research Agendas defined by ARTEMIS and ENIAC will serve as roadmaps for any R&D initiative in Europe. In addition, there is a growing interest for reactivating national support in the form of PPPs aiming at focusing available resources in ‘geographic local clusters’, named in France for instance ‘Poles de Competitivite’. Those will have to be networked at the European level to address global markets and MEDEA+ or its successor programme may be instrumental for that purpose.
The debate on ‘Beyond MEDEA+’ is about its actual extension and technical content, but it is already clear that the synergism between the various schemes in preparation has to be established and that the MEDEA+ community will play a vital role in ensuring a pan-European approach to make better use of Europe’s invaluable assets..
