• H2020
• Industrial Leadership
• Advanced Materials, Manufacturing & Processing

Two thousand two hundred scientists from across Europe gathered in Warsaw last month to debate the key issues connected to materials, including innovation, Horizon 2020 and smart infrastructures.

At the ‘Materials for Europe’ event – a part of ‘Materials Weekend’ – on 19 September 2015, more than 70 invited VIP participants discussed with Clara de la Torre, director of the Key Enabling Technologies Directorate in DG Research and Innovation of the European Commission, a strategic view on the latest challenges in the materials field. She focused on the vital role of materials for a highly competitive European industry and explained the Commission’s approaches to co-ordinating R&I within the framework of the present and future European research programmes and initiatives.

Other major topics discussed by academics, industrial materials researchers and politicians in the Polish capital were the innovation policy and the role of materials in this context. In particular, the role of the European Innovation Council to complement the works of the European Research Council was highlighted. The need to follow-up and evaluate projects to ensure that technological breakthroughs relevant to European industry are recognised and market uptake is facilitated was also stressed.

Also debated was the need to strengthen the new concept of a Common House of Materials, aimed at discussing and integrating cross-cutting fields where materials are the key requirements for development and progress. Additionally, smart infrastructures and how to potentiate them/link to regional cluster as well as the relationship between Horizon 2020 and the allocated national structural funds, focusing on the various strategies and the policies to be used to gain the maximum benefit, were discussed.

‘Materials for Europe’ was organised by the European Materials Research Society (E-MRS) and the Federation of European Materials Societies (FEMS), under the umbrella of the European Materials Forum (EMF) and the Alliance for Materials (A4M). The event formed an integral part of a ’Materials Weekend’, which bridged the two largest materials conferences ever held in Central Europe, namely the E-MRS Fall Meeting and the FEMS EUROMAT conference; both of which took place at the Warsaw University of Technology.

The events aimed to strengthen materials science and engineering in Europe and to increase its visibility as well as demonstrate that the development and implementation of new materials is essential to meet the societal needs associated with energy, health, transport and climate change.

In addition to ‘Materials for Europe’, the ‘Materials Weekend’ also included the Warsaw ‘Festival of Science’ as well as tutorial courses on cutting edge materials developments and a ‘Young Scientists Workshop’.

Pan European Networks attended the E-MRS Fall Meeting, coverage of which will feature in the next edition of Pan European Networks: Science & Technology, due to be published in December.