The increase was announced by ICT Commissioner Viviane Reding as researchers in the field met in Prague for the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) conference, the first such gathering since this research programme was established in 1989.
The importance of this 20th anniversary rendez-vous was not just in its intellectual interest, but also in its context and timing, Reding told delegates. “ICT is now even more essential as a tool to revitalise the economy and create jobs,” she said in a video link.
Underlining its intent, the Commission intends to launch two long-term flagship research programmes that will achieve research breakthroughs – the development of biocomputers and a computer simulation of the brain being two possible examples. It is also taking action to draw young researchers into the area and support small and medium enterprises to turn the fruits of the FET programme into new business opportunities.
The conference was a showcase for some of the fascinating technologies that have been developed in the 20 years of the programme, including demonstrations of the ability to control computers with thought waves, a “parentless” robot learning about and reacting to its environment, and a computer system that helps stroke patients to recover limb function by activating previously unused neural pathways between the eye and the brain.
While Europe may be lagging overall in ICT research, Reding said FET, is a “crown jewel” with some remarkable achievements to its name. Early investment in quantum computing means that Europe now produces half of the science worldwide in this area and the research has been applied to computer network security and taken up by Siemens, Thales and other companies.
Another example is the marriage of computers and life sciences. “FET was also amongst the first programmes in the world to bring neuroscience and computing together to explore how the brain processes information and develop alternative ways of computing,” Reding said. This is now finding applications in medicine, and in the development of computers that, like the brain, have the plasticity to compensate and carry on working in the event of a minor failure.
These examples illustrate that FET has met the expectations of its founders, becoming a unique European scheme for incubating new research ideas. Now is the time to scale-up support for this high risk research, Rudolf Strohmeier, Reding’s Chef de Cabinet, told the meeting. “We need to strengthen the current scheme and also to launch new initiatives to raise outputs.”
One of the main ways of doing this will be through the proposed flagship projects, which aim to pool resources to overcome the national fragmentation in fundamental ICT research. They are envisaged as multi-million Euro joint national/EU initiatives lasting over five years or more that cross-fertilise ICT with other disciplines. This would enable European researchers to explore more risky areas, leading to revolutionary breakthroughs.
Such large-scale, interdisciplinary initiatives may require cooperation with other areas of Framework Progamme 7 (FP7). But Strohmeier said the decision to increase FET’s budget at a faster rate than the increase in FP7 (which is due to rise by 10 per cent per annum from 2009 to 2013), has no implications for spending on FP7 as a whole.
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