2023-10-23 18:00:07
On September 30, the two “flagships” of European research, the Graphene project and the Human Brain Project (HBP), were decommissioned: their missions came to an end. A little over ten years earlier, their flags had been raised with fanfare. On January 28, 2013, the European Commission announced the launch of these two flagship programs in the field of emerging future technologies, to support the work of dozens of research teams spread across around twenty countries.
Graphene powder sample produced by Avanzare, partner of Graphene Flagship. These powders can be used to dope plastics and other composite materials to improve their strength, flexibility and weight characteristics. GRAPHENE FLAGSHIP
Each of the two elected officials was to receive nearly 1 billion euros, distributed over ten years – it will ultimately be 600 million euros for HBP and 1,400 million for Graphene. The funds came from the European Union (in theory 500 million euros per project) and from Member States or companies for the rest.
Compared to the 80 billion of the Horizon 2020 research budget distributed between 2014 and 2020, the sum may seem small. But the ambition was great. Catalyze interdisciplinarity, encourage collaborations between dozens of research institutions across Europe, consolidate a research axis over a decade, instead of the usual periods of three to four years, and put Europe on the map world of these two themes. The challenge: developing innovative projects at the limit of feasibility which would have remained beyond the reach of national programs in the short term.
“The means implemented were to generate a paradigm shift and revolutionize our way of seeing science, both in terms of technoscientific strategies and societal applications”relieves Yves Frégnacmember of the HBP, researcher in cognitive sciences and CNRS research director, in Saclay. “With the Graphene project, we wanted to give ourselves the means to transform a scientific discovery into technological and industrial applications”recalls Thomas Skordas, Deputy Director General at the European Commission Directorate (communication networks, content and technology), who managed the flagships.
Strong controversies
More concretely ? The Graphene project’s mission was to release from the laboratories a molecule characterized in 2004 with exceptional and promising electronic, thermal or mechanical properties.
The Human Brain project, for its part, aimed to build a virtual human brain. The aim was to deepen the understanding of this mysterious organ, but also to find new treatments for diseases. brain – while reducing animal experiments – and develop personalized digital medicine. Another objective, closer to the scope of operation of flagships: to develop computer technologies inspired by the brain.
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