Flagships
Graphene Flagship
With a budget of €1 billion, the EU Graphene Flagship represents a new form of joint, coordinated research on an unprecedented scale, forming Europe’s biggest ever research initiative.
The Graphene Flagship aims at bringing together academic and industrial researchers to take graphene from the realm of academic laboratories into European society in the space of 10 years, thus generating economic growth, new jobs and new opportunities.
The core consortium consists of 142 academic and industrial research groups in 23 countries. In addition, the project has a growing number of associated members that will be incorporated in the scientific and technological work packages within the Horizon 2020 phase (1 April 2016 – 31 March 2018).
ICFO leads Work Package 8 Photonics and Optoelectronics (former WP5 in previous ramp-up phase) and is also involved in research topics like Flexible Electronics, Sensors and Energy Applications.
Quantum Flagship
The European Union launched the Quantum Flagship in October 2018, positioned to be one of the most ambitious European initiatives with a budget of 1b€ funded by the European Commission. It will support large-scale and long-term research and innovation projects, with the main goal of transferring quantum physics research from the lab to the market by means of commercial applications.
With a 10 years long life span and involving the quantum community at large, with over 5000 European researchers in academia and industry, the Quantum Flagship intends to place Europe at the forefront of the second quantum revolution, which is now unfolding worldwide. It aims to bring disruptive quantum technologies to the scientific arena and to society in general by driving new commercial opportunities addressing global challenges, providing strategic capabilities for security and seeding yet unimagined applications for the future. It will build a network of European Quantum Technologies programs that will foster an ecosystem capable of delivering the knowledge, technologies and open research infrastructures and testbeds necessary for the development of a world-leading knowledge-based industry in Europe. The initiative divides all topics in five main areas of study: Quantum Communication (QComm), Quantum Computing (QComp), Quantum Simulation (QSim), Quantum Metrology and Sensing (QMS), and finally, Basic Science (BSci). The first 3-year phase of the Quantum Flagship, known as the ramp-up phase (October 2018 – September 2021), will fund projects with an overall budget of €132 million.
140 proposals were submitted for the first stage for these main areas plus for a Coordination and Support Action. After a thorough peer-review evaluation, 20 projects including a Coordination and Support Action have been selected for execution during the first stage of the flagship. ICFO is a partner in 7 of the projects, two of which as coordinator.