HORIZON BLOG: European R&D policy newsbytes

The European Commission organised a roundtable with experts to discuss the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in science, as scientists are pushing to increase its uptake in their disciplines.

The talks, hosted by new research commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva and Henna Virkkunen, the executive vice-president for tech, security and democracy, aimed at identifying how to better use and adopt AI to speed up scientific innovation in Europe.

“This roundtable is an important step in realising our vision of a united and well-resourced ecosystem for AI in science, to drive scientific breakthroughs and boost EU competitiveness,” Zaharieva said.

The discussions also looked into ways to pool and consolidate European resources in the field.

Read more about it here.

The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) has selected seven proposals to establish AI factories, to give start-ups and researchers access to supercomputers designed for the development of AI models and applications. 

The first AI factories represent a €1.5 billion investment, with half coming from the EU’s Digital Europe Programme and Horizon Europe, and the rest from national funds, after a call was launched in September. 

The factories will involve updating two existing EU supercomputers in Spain and Greece, and deploying brand-new, AI-optimised supercomputers in Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and Sweden. 

The AI factories will more than double existing EuroHPC computing capacity, and will be deployed in 2025-2026, according to the Commission. 

“Now we are ready to lead with the right infrastructure in our ambition for the EU to become the AI continent,” said Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty. 

“We are on track to make the AI factories initiative a reality in the first 100 days of the new European Commission. We expect a second wave of offers on 1 February.” 

A host of European start-up and investor associations have called on the European Commission to launch a European Venture Capital Initiative (EVCI), to foster exchanges between VCs and institutional investors such as pension funds. 

“The EVCI would create a label and a fund-of-fund structure to enhance institutional investors’ investments in VCs, by mapping the ambitious funds in which they can invest, and carry out a due diligence process for them,” the networks, led by France Digitale, wrote in an open letter to President Ursula von der Leyen and her new commissioners. 

Start-ups in Europe face considerable challenges raising funds to scale up, partly because institutional investors prefer to invest Europeans’ savings oversees. 

“These important financial actors are over-investing in the US market and under-investing in the European risk market, due to our regulatory and cultural barriers,” the letter states. 

A working group in the European Association of Research and Technology Organisations (EARTO) has recommended that FP10 supports emerging health technologies to strengthen the sector’s competitiveness and resilience. 

From biomedicine to digital health, “the healthcare innovation chain in Europe lacks continuity and efficient mechanisms for the adoption of new health technologies from the bench to the bedside,” EARTO wrote in a position paper. 

Citing “ageing populations, chronic and non-communicable diseases, new climate-related health issues, mental health problems, anti-microbial resistance, future pandemics, and economically unsustainable healthcare costs,” the group said that the successor of Horizon Europe should ensure adequate funding to cross-cutting health innovations and stimulate the participation of SMEs.  

Read the full paper here. 

Solar radiation modification technologies, which consist in reflecting sunlight away from the Earth to reduce its warming, are not ready to be deployed and cannot substitute emissions cuts, advisers told the European Commission. 

According to a study led Chief Scientific Advisors (GCSA) and the European Group on Ethics (EGE), these technologies could “have negative impacts on ecosystems, change rainfall patterns, and hamper food production.” But that’s not all. 

“Presenting these technologies as available solutions could damage efforts that are already underway to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change,” they said, calling on the EU to refuse to deploy them during global negotiations.  

EU’s new research commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva agreed. “These technologies do show some promise, but they are far from mature,” she stated. “Research must continue, but the opinion of the European Group on Ethics shows research must be rigourous and ethical, and it must take full account of the possible range of direct and indirect effects,” she said.  

Read the press release here. 

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) is launching its new European Raw Materials Academy to plug the skills gap on the raw materials value chain within EU member states. 

“Critical raw materials are one of the foundations of our renewed industrial policy,” Executive Vice-President for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy Stéphane Séjourné said in a statement.  

“We need to reduce our dependencies with our domestic production meeting high quality standards and at the same time secure substantial contracts with like-minded partners all over the globe,” he added. 

The initiative, which is the second EU Academy to be set up under the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA) and implemented by the EIT, is supported with €10 million from the Single Market Programme and Horizon Europe. It is expecting 1,200 participants. 

Read the press release here.

The European Commission has awarded the first 130 projects a Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Seal in a bid to boost the development of clean and deep and digital tech. 

The chosen projects, which in definition bring “an innovative, emerging and cutting-edge element or contributing to reducing or preventing strategic dependencies of the Union,” are expected to gain visibility and unlock additional EU funding. 

“As a badge of distinction, the STEP Seal should help projects to attract private finance, particularly from investors seeking derisked projects with a strong Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) profile,” the Commission wrote in a statement. 

Read the press release here. 

The European Union and the Gates Foundation will co-host the Gavi 6.0 pledging summit in the first quarter of next year in Brussels.

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has transformed global immunisation efforts by vaccinating over 1.1 billion children, saving more than 18.8 million lives from preventable diseases since 2000. Gavi efforts have generated over $250 billion in economic benefits and anticipated more than 100 outbreaks

The 2025 Gavi summit will bring together global leaders from government, partner organisations, vaccine manufacturers, civil society and the private sector, to secure crucial investments in vaccination programmes.

President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen the main goal for Gavi is to vaccinate 500 million children by 2030. "Gavi’s role is key for making equitable vaccine access a reality, and for empowering our partners to achieve health sovereignty,” she said.

More details here.

French universities have warned they will have to reduce student admissions, stop offering courses, and close campuses, under current government plans for the 2025 budget. 

Rectors from almost 120 higher education institutions represented by France Universités declared 3 December a day of mobilisation for “universities in danger”. 

“60% of them foresee that the new governmental measures might not only lead them to postpone investment and hiring of staff, but would also compel them to close down outlying campuses thanks to which students, some of them coming from deprived rural areas, are given access to the higher education system,” the association said in a statement. 

The rectors say their budgets are insufficient to cover rising salary, pension and energy costs. 

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded €678 million in grants to 328 researchers across all scientific disciplines. 

The laureates, in majority German, will carry out projects ranging from engineering to humanities to life sciences at universities and research centres of 25 member states and other countries associated with the Horizon Europe programme.  

"Congratulations to all the researchers who have won ERC Consolidator Grants, in this latest round for the mid-career stage,” ERC head Maria Leptin said in a statement. “Whilst we had the funds available to back more applicants this year than in 2023, the fact remains that many applicants who were rated as excellent in this competition will still not be funded due to lack of budget."

The new European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, Ekaterina Zaharieva, pointed out that she would make her mission to expand the ERC to "help strengthen Europe’s competitiveness and fostering ground-breaking discoveries."

The ERC expects these grants to create some 2,750 jobs for postdoctoral fellows, PhD students, and other staff. 

Read the press release here.