Second plenary meeting – Nanotechnology pilot

Thursday October 22ndthe second plenary meeting within the Nanotechnology pilot took place at Skåne European Office. The objective with the meeting was twofold, firstly to present and discuss the outcome of the mapping exercise that took place between summer and end September; and secondly to elaborate potential areas for joint demonstration cases. Ten out of twelve regions participated in the meeting.

Before the results from the survey was presented a short background to the Vanguard Initiative was given as well as to the methodology for the different Vanguard pilots. The meeting provided a good opportunity to spend a few minutes discussing where we are and where we are heading at. In short the timeline for the nanotechnology pilot could be summarised as below, looking from kick-off meeting in June to the upcoming matchmaking event in February 2016.

However, as mentioned above one of the main objective with the meeting was to discuss the results from the mapping exercise. Els Van de Velde and Vincent Duchêne from Idea Consult presented their analysis, although it is still a work in progress some conclusions could be drawn, e.g. in which application domain that regions would like to put emphasis on. Most regions said that they have benefitted a lot from the process of filling in the survey and have today a better understanding of their own nanotechnology structure than they had before. All regions present had the opportunity to give their input to the analysis made and also to complement if needed.

The second objective of the day was to define specific cases that could be further elaborated into joint demonstration collaboration. After long discussions participating regions had by the end of the meeting identified four, possible six, cases for joint demonstration activities.

-Nanowires for ICT and Energy applications

-Integrated Nano-Bio Systems (Safety, Health and Environmental Monitoring)

-Pilot production of Nano-Materials

-Printed Nano-Electronics

Next steps in the process will be to further discuss the potential cases with case leaders leading up to concept notes with more details on each application area.This process will be led by the case leaders, but all participating regions are recommended to actively contribute. In beginning of December, all concept notes will be shared with all participating regions. These will be the starting point for the next plenary meeting/internal match making event to be held December 16. All in allwill it serve as good preparation for the Vanguard match making event in February 2016.