Caterina Biscari, LEAPS outgoing Chair and Director of ALBA, participated today, February 9th 2022 in the panel discussion on “Innovation futures: is Europe putting the right building blocks in place?” within the frame of Science Business Annual Conference “Horizon Europe: the First Assessment”.
Together with Jean-David Malo (EISMEA) and Nina Kopola (CEO of Business Finland), Biscari reflected on whether the Horizon Europe program is doing all the right things regarding innovation, employment and additional urgent topics to ensure a successful future for innovation.
Large-scale research infrastructures have an increasingly important role to play in Europe, not only in driving technological innovation, but also in supporting high-growth start-ups and innovative SMEs that depend on the advanced science being conducted in their laboratories.
Biscari mentioned that LEAPS is planning to implement a new type of access named “targeted challenge-driven access” to answer the emerging challenges, linking academy and industry, model that can be greatly boosted if supported by HE programs. To this point, Caterina Biscari also added how essential it is to attract talents and find ways to bring experts in RIs to companies. “We need to bridge research centers and Industry through training and mobility programmes supported by dedicated grants,” explained Biscari.
Finally, she stated that national facilities could collaborate more effectively if brought together under the EU umbrella in order to be ready to answer current societal challenges. “European support is indispensable at this stage to enable technological development for the future with joint forces “concluded Biscari.