Last 3rd of July, a Brokerage event to form consortia to present project proposals to the 2019 Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials, Biotechnology, and Advanced Manufacturing and Processing (NMBP) call, took place at the IMDEA Materials Institute. This call, is the only one specifically focused on advanced materials and nanomaterials developments within Horizon 2020.
The event was organized together by MATERPLAT, the Advanced Materials and Nanomaterials Spanish Technological Platform, which is currently coordinated from the IMDEA Materials Institute, EUMAT (European Technology Platform for Advanced Engineering Materials and Technologies), the Fundación para el conocimiento madri+d as part of the European Enterprise Network (EEN) and the Centre for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI).
The goal of the event was two-fold: present insights and expectations form the European Comission with respect to the 2019 NMBP topics, and build an international platform for networking activities, oriented to find suitable partners to present proposals for this call.
Both objectives surpassed the expectations of the organizers. The first session of the event counted with first level presentations. Besides the presentations of associations and initiatives such as MATERPLAT, EUMAT, SUSCHEM, the European Materials Modelling Council and the EPPN (European Network For Pilot Production Facilities And Innovation Hubs), there were very interesting presentations from Olga Río (Project Officer from the European Comission), who presented the nineth Framework Programme for Research of the CE (Horizon Europe) and Lucía Íñigo (NMBP Spanish Delegate), who presented the goals of Spain for Horizon 2002 in terms of funding return and our current position regarding those goals. In particular, the analysis of the NMBP call between 2014 and 2017 showed that through different entities of the whole value chain, Spain coordinated 20% of the funded projects and had presence in 68% of the total projects during that period of time. As a consequence, Spanish entities received a total of 294 millions of euros, putting Spain in the second place regarding funding return, only after Germany.
Taking this data into account, which show how attractive Spanish entities are right now as parterns or project coordinators for this call, this seemed to be the ideal moment to organize an event of this type in Spain.
After the thematic presenations, a “pitch elevator” session took place in which 10 entities presented to the crowd their project ideas to address the 2019 NMBP topics, and after the “pitch elevators” and the lunch break, a session of bilateral meetings took place. Overall, 170 people of 13 different countries attended the event and held a total of 235 bilateral meetings. The participation of irish and turkish delegations should be specially mentioned, given that they were the foreign ones represented by a larger number of entities.
Besides, the attendants to the event could visit the facilities of the IMDEA Materials Institute after the bilateral meetings session.
In summary, the event was a complety success that hopefully will be reflected in even better results for the Spanish institutions in this call than the ones obtained so far, and help placing Spain as the reference country in Europe regarding development and manufacturing of advanced materials and nanomaterials.
