Awards

European Commission to announce winners of €1B research awards

View the Future and Emerging Technologies projects — 2 will receive the largest research award in history

Update: The winners have been announced. Read about them here.

On Monday, the long selection process for one of the more ambitious research funding projects of the digital age will reach its apotheosis when the winners of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagships initiative are announced. Neelie Kroes, VP of the European Commission and High Commissioner for the digital agenda for Europe, will announce the winners at a press conference in Brussels.

From a shortlist of six multinational research consortia, two have been chosen by a panel of experts, including leading scientists, professors, Nobel Prize winners and industrialists. These two winners will benefit from up to €1 billion of EU funding each.

Project videos and papers freely available

The six FET flagships pilots competing for this coveted prize formally presented themselves earlier at the 2nd European Future Technologies Conference and Exhibition, where they were introduced by Kroes.

Elsevier collaborated with the European Commission to publish the scientific proceedings of this meeting in Procedia Computer Science. Both the video and scientific papers are freely available on Elsevier’s ScienceDirect, enabling researchers and the public to explore the scientific vision of each of the proposals in detail.

Here are the contenders in no particular order:

• FuturICT — The FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator and Crisis-Relief System: Unleashing the Power of Information for a Sustainable Future, by Steven Bishop, Dirk Helbing,Paul Lukowicz & Rosaria Conte, Procedia Computer Science, Volume 7, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2011.12.014

• Guardian Angels — Guardian Angels for a Smarter Life: Enabling a Zero-Power Technological Platform for Autonomous Smart Systems, by Adrian M. Ionescu, Christofer Hieroldrian M. Ionescu, Christofer Hierold, Procedia Computer Science, volume 7,  DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2011.12.016

• RoboCom — Robot Companions for Citizens, by Paolo Dario, Paul F.M.J. Verschure, Tony Prescott, Gordon Cheng, Giulio Sandini, Roberto Cingolani, Rüdiger Dillmann, Dario Floreano, Christophe Leroux, Sheila MacNeil, Pieter Roelfsema, Xenophon Verykios, Antonio Bicchi, Chris Melhuish, Alin Albu-Schäffer, Procedia Computer Science , volume 7, DOI:

• ITFoM — IT Future of Medicine: a revolution in healthcare, by Hans Lehrach, Ralf Subrak, Peter Boyle, Markus Pasterk, Kurt Zatloukal, Heimo Müller, Tim Hubbard, Angela Brand, Mark Girolami, Daniel Jameson, Frank J. Bruggeman, Hans V. Westerhof, Procedia Computer Science,  volume 7, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2011.12.012

• Graphene — Graphene-Driven Revolutions in ICT and Beyond, by Jari Kinaret, Andrea C. Ferrari, Vladimir Fal’ko and Jani Kivioja, Procedia Computer Science Volume 7, DOI; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2011.12.013

• HBP — Introducing the Human Brain Project, by Henry Markram, Karlheinz Meier, Thomas Lippert, Sten Grillner, Richard Frackowiak, Stanislas Dehaene, Alois Knoll, Haim Sompolinsky, Kris Verstreken, Javier DeFelipe, Seth Grant, Jean-Pierre Changeux, Alois Saria, Procedia Computer Science Volume 7, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2011.12.015

For more information about the FET Flagships and related initiatives, visit the website of the European Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) and the Europe’s science and technology initiative for 2020.

Watch the press conference

On Monday, you can watch the press conference where the winners will be announced officially, streamed live by EbS, and find a report here on Elsevier Connect.

The Author

As a Senior Publisher for Elsevier Computer Science, Sweitze Roffel focuses on on artificial and computational intelligence and theory. He holds and engineering degree in chemistry from the University of Groningen. He joined Elsevier in 2004 and is based in Amsterdam.