ITEA and Korean electronics institute celebrate decade of co-operation

EUREKA’s cluster for software-intensive systems and services and a Korean electronics institute are celebrating ten years of co-operation.

ITEA, which supports innovative, industry-driven, pre-competitive R&D projects, and the ETRI, the Korean Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, began collaborating in 2004 and have said that it’s important to recognise their partnership as helping to “define and solve the global agenda”.

In comments carried on EUREKA’s website, Dr Heung-Nam Kim, president of ETRI, said: “I’m convinced that EUREKA ITEA 3 is a shortcut to sharing R&D collaboration.

“Innovation originates from diversity. Korean society should break its homogeneity to become a more innovative society with more diverse partners to solve global problems. We have a great opportunity to interface European robustness and Korean agility to create mutually reciprocal, collaborative relationships. I believe this is the main benefit of ITEA for us.”

Kim added that the collaboration has helped bring Europeans and Koreans closer together “emotionally and mentally” in terms of research, and has also helped to overcome geographical distances. The international partnership has assisted the formation of new project ventures between firms from Europe and South Korea. EUREKA says the projects established under the agreement are a rare addition to the country’s domestic R&D programme.