The European Innovation Council (EIC) has selected 38 innovative projects to develop new ideas towards radically new future technologies. Nine out of the 38 projects involve UK universities.
In total, the projects will receive £110m (€124m) under the future and emerging technologies (FET Open) strand of the EIC pilot, run under the EU’s research and innovation programme Horizon 2020.
The list of beneficiary consortia includes 15 UK universities named as project partner and three as project coordinator that will be sharing £25.5m fund to develop their innovative projects. The project includes:
- Heriot-Watt University, “Neuromorphic Quantum Computing” (£2.5m funding)
- The University Of Glasgow for the project “Super-Pixels: Redefining the way we sense the world” (£2.2m funding).
- The University Of Warwick, “Boosting Crop Growth using Natural Product and Synthesis Enabled Solar Harvesting” (£4.3m funding).
Other universities that will benefit from the EU funds include: Imperial College, University Of Cambridge, King’s College London, University Of Bristol, University Of Surrey, the Nottingham Trent University, and University Of Strathclyde.
The EIC pilot supports innovators, entrepreneurs, small companies and scientists with bright ideas and the ambition to scale up internationally. It brings together the parts of Horizon 2020 that provide funding, advice and networking opportunities for those at cutting edge of innovation.
The selected projects will receive about £2.7m (€3m) each for collaborative and inter-disciplinary research into topics ranging from quantum computing, removing space objects from orbit to fighting brain viruses.
Neuromorphic computing – which hopes to mimic the way the human brain works to dramatically improve the efficiency of important computational tasks, such as perception and decision making – and quantum computing, de-orbiting of spacecraft, fighting brain viruses, early and non-invasive diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease are just a few examples of the challenges that these projects are targeting.
