MEDEA+ enters its closing year
Out of the 77 labelled MEDEA+ projects, some 48 projects have already been successfully completed and another nine projects will finish at year end, while another 20 projects will continue in 2008 or even beyond. Currently, 465 partner organisations from 22 countries are involved in project consortia and the trans-national nature of MEDEA+ is illustrated by the fact that, on average, partners for a project come from five different countries.
"MEDEA+ is perfectly in line with the planning," commented Jozef Cornu, MEDEA+ Chairman. "It has delivered important results in applications ranging from wireless communications to smart cards and automotive electronics, helping European industry to maintain leading positions in these strategic global industries. These results are a tribute to efficient culture and infrastructure of cooperation developed by MEDEA+ and the preceding MEDEA and JESSI programmes."
To maintain the momentum of the programme, MEDEA+ stakeholders jointly decided in May to launch another call for project proposals. This call resulted in 24 project outlines, clearly demonstrating industry's continued commitment to substantial investment in Research and Development (R&D). The project evaluation process will finish with the project labelling at the end of 2007. This may top-up required resources of the programme by another 10%. With programme duration of eight years, MEDEA+ will elapse at the end of 2008.
Chairman Cornu also highlighted the new EUREKA strategic initiative, called CATRENE, "Cluster for Application and Technology Research in Europe on NanoElectronics", launched October 25, 2007. This cluster-programme embodies the ambition of Europe and European companies to deliver nano- and microelectronics solutions that enable ‘Lighthouse Projects'. Lighthouse projects address large and global socioeconomic needs such as transportation, healthcare, security, energy, environment, entertainment and communications. They also reflect a clear vision of the technical challenges and of the expected benefits and economic returns and are at the heart of public needs.
The principal added value of the lighthouse projects will be the ability to create a critical mass in terms of R&D scope, effort, participation and support from public authorities around well-understood societal and technical challenges. Experience has shown that the lighthouse philosophy is the way European leadership positions can be built. From those global lighthouse projects, nanoelectronic applications will be defined with the technologies needed to enable them.
CATRENE, which will build on the highly successful European MEDEA+ nanoelectronicsprogramme, will start in January 2008, with the first call for project proposals expected in the first half of 2008.
