EIT ICT Labs wins European race for the innovation of ICT
Press release / Dutch participants are Philips, the three universities of technology and Novay
17 December 2009
The European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) in Budapest has selected EIT ICT Labs to secure a leading role in information and communications technology (ICT) for Europe. EIT ICT Labs is a consortium of businesses, universities of technology and research centres in the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Germany and France. The decision is a direct result of the Lisbon Strategy of 2000, under which European leaders agreed to make the European Union into the most competitive and innovative knowledge economy in the world.
The EIT will make an annual sum of €22 million available to the
consortium for a period of seven years (although this period may be
extended). The consortium will also have to raise a much larger
amount of funding itself. The funding will be spent on teaching,
research, development and launching innovative ICT products and
services onto the market. The funding also aims to speed up the
growth of spin-off businesses, attract the very best international
talent and generally promote economic growth and employment
opportunities.
The EIT ICT Labs network will have five physical locations. In
the Netherlands, it will have a base in the High Tech Campus in
Eindhoven and its other locations will be in Berlin,
Helsinki, Paris and Stockholm. The Dutch participants in the
consortium are Philips, Novay (formerly the Telematica Institute)
and the Netherlands Institute for Research on ICT - which carries
out all the ICT research of 3TU, the partnership of the three
technical universities of Delft, Eindhoven and Twente. The Dutch
contribution to the consortium will be coordinated by University of
Twente professor, Peter Apers.
Innovations in ICT will be brought about more quickly and
testing can begin sooner, shortening the time before they become
available on the market. Academic teaching will, from the outset,
be combined with a profound knowledge of industrial research,
development and innovation, so that professionals can also develop
their entrepreneurial skills. Multidisciplinary networks will also
be formed, linking researchers and engineers with economists,
social scientists and industrial design engineers. The network of
five locations will provide the opportunity to tailor innovations
to the European market as a whole. The ubiquity of ICT and the
growth in the number and sheer variety of its applications means
that many contemporary global issues can only really be tackled in
this way.
Note to the press, not for publication:
You can obtain more information from
Paul van Tongeren,
spokesperson for the University of Twente,
Tel: 053 489 2210 Mobile: 06 5338 0217
e-mail: p.h.vantongeren@utwente.nl
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