€2.29B backbone: how the Commission plans to build world-class research infrastructures

The Horizon 2020 programme will invest €2.49 billion between now and 2020 to build what the Commission promises will be, “New leading-edge research infrastructures in all fields of science and technology”, to keep the European scientific community at the forefront t of research, and help industry strengthen its knowledge base and technological know-how.

Most immediately in 2014, €277 million will be available to investigate how Europe can better create, share and use research infrastructures (RIs). Such facilities include: major scientific equipment, knowledge-based resources such as archives and e-infrastructures, such as data and computer systems and communication networks.

As the mantra goes, excellent RIs attract excellent researchers, and so the creation and maintenance of high-quality facilities in Europe is seen as a key component of the European Research Area, and pivotal in the global competition for the best scientists. Lack of access to research infrastructures is also seen as a factor in the innovation divide within Europe, and the work programme includes calls that aim to improve virtual access to RIs, thus allowing researchers in less-developed regions to work with top-quality resources.

RIs are also important meeting places, where industrial researchers can meet academics. “Because of their ability to assemble a ‘critical mass’ of people, knowledge and investment, they contribute to national, regional and European economic development,” says the Commission.

The programme outlines four calls for the first two years of the programme: developing new world class research infrastructures; integrating and opening research infrastructures of European interest; 

e-Infrastructures; and support to innovation, human resources, policy and international cooperation.

This call, which was launched last week (December 11) with a budget of €70 million in 2014 and €129 million in 2015, will work in two ways: first, to support and implement the infrastructures already identified as important by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) and secondly, to identify the next generation of RIs through design studies. 

Work on infrastructures already identified by ESFRI will include funding of up to €5 million for consortia – made up of all the relevant stakeholders, such as the relevant government ministries, funding agencies, and research councils - to lay the legal and financial groundwork for the construction of these RIs. 

For the next generation of RIs, the Commission will fund proposals to the tune of €1 million to €3 million to look at the conceptual and technical design of new infrastructures. Research should assess the scientific and technical feasibility of the projects, as well as any legal and financial concerns, and result in a conceptual design report, which can later be used as a guideline for policymakers in the discussion on Europe’s RI needs.

“Effective and convenient access” is needed “to the best research infrastructures” says the Commission, and this serves as the motivation behind a new call with €140 million over two years, to open up national RIs to researchers from Europe. 

This will be achieved through networking to foster a culture of co-operation between stakeholders, improvements in virtual access, and joint research activities to improve the integrated services provided at European level by RIs. 

These activities will be targeted to address specific types of RIs or research communities, across all fields, including: biological and medical sciences, social sciences and humanities, energy, environmental and earth sciences, and physical sciences.

The Commission has lofty plans on the creation and exploitation of data in Europe over the coming years, including increasing the exchange of data between researchers in different countries and different disciplines, the open access principle of Horizon 2020 which will require participants to make all articles resulting from funding publicly available, and a move in many disciplines towards greater use of data-mining. 

This requires new tools to make data understandable, exchangeable and exploitable, while also catering for data privacy and security. e-Infrastructures will play a major role in meeting this demand, and €177 million will be spent in the first two years of this programme to addresses four main priorities:

• Integration of e-infrastructure resources and services across the board – networking, computing, data, software, user interfaces – to provide seamless services tailored to user needs 
• Implementation of the e-infrastructure necessary to fully exploit the opportunities presented by big data
• Support for the successful deployment of the new principle of open access under Horizon 2020, including researcher electronic identities and issues surrounding data deposition, storing, access and preservation
• Implementation of the e-infrastructure part of the EU strategy on high performance computing (HPC), in particular the provision of services, infrastructure for computing applications and a network of HPC competence centres for SMEs.

Even when all the financial, legal and technical obstacles have been overcome, RIs are of minimal benefit unless people know how to use them. As technologies and opportunities evolve new profession such as data scientists are emerging and this call will focus on skills development.

A number of other support measures, such as networking and awareness campaigns, will aim to increase the use made by industry of research infrastructures, especially amongst smaller firms, which are often simply unaware of the opportunities available.