Light project is first to gain from FET Open

The first grant agreement under FET Open in Horizon 2020 has been signed.

The ULTRAQCL project is the first venture to fully benefit from the funding scheme since the first call for applications closed. The €2.8m project focuses on creating ultrafast and intense THz light pulses using innovative and novel semiconductor concepts on a level that is far beyond current leading levels.

In comments carried by the European Commission, Timo Hallantie, the head of ‘Fostering Novel Ideas: FET-Open’ unit in the Commission’s Research Executive Agency, said: “With the signature of the first FET Open H2020 grant agreement, the exciting research to discover emerging technologies is about to begin. In the coming days we will be signing more grant agreements with other organisations having other new and promising ideas.”

The project is co-ordinated by the National Center for Scientific Research in France and will start on 1 October 2015. Also involved in the project consortium are five research institutions located in four different countries in the EU.