MaterialsEuroRoads
Welcome to the MaterialsEuroRoads website.
MaterialsEuroRoads is a platform for scientists, industrialists, strategists and policy-makers at the forefront of materials innovation to exchange ideas and concepts paving the way for the future of materials research. The design and engineering of advanced innovative materials and related key enabling technologies serve as backbones for the development and maintenance of a sustainable, competitive European industry. In helping to meet some of the great challenges facing society today such as clean and efficient energy, climate and environmental protection, resource efficiency, clean mobility and integrated transport and health to name but a few, innovative materials development are one of the keys to ensuring Europe’s future prosperity and stability.
MaterialsEuroRoads continues within the tradition of a Specific Support Action of the EU’s 6th Framework Programme (the “SMART” project) which employed forecast and foresight methodology to identify and roadmap key areas in advanced materials research. Since then, MaterialsEuroRoads has been facilitating the exchange of ideas between stakeholders in European materials research forecasting through various activities, including the organisation of annual workshops in Brussels which are also attended by staff of the European Commission.
How to join MaterialsEuroRoads
MaterialsEuroRoads is open to all key European players working in the areas of foresight and forecasting for advanced materials research. If you would like to actively participate please send an informal membership application with your curriculum vitae and a short summary of your foresight work to ptj-smart-ssa@fz-juelich.de.
The 6th MaterialsEuroRoads annual Business Lunch Talk will be held on 27th November at the Brussels Offices of the Helmholtz Association. This year, the luncheon will focus on “Materials for Critical Environments and Digital & Industrial Technologies”.
As in the past, the event will be an informal meeting of a selected, invited audience (25 to 30 persons) aimed at facilitating the dialogue between experts, strategists, decision makers and other major stakeholders in materials-related research and business. Its purpose is to identify future strategic research areas which are required to solve the challenges facing European industry and society and which may be addressed within the content and structure of the European Community’s new framework programme “Horizon Europe”.
Participants from different fields of materials research and innovation and players along the relevant value chains will be brought together to exchange their views and positions on the importance of materials research and development. Confirmed speakers are: Marianne BALAT-PICHELIN, Deputy Director of the CNRS’s PROMES Unit based in Font-Romeu Odeillo, France; Gérard VIGNOLES Director of the LCTS at the University of Bordeaux in Pessac, France and Peter FRATZL Director of the Department of Biomaterials at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam-Golm, Germany.
The workshop will focus on three thematic areas:
Materials for critical environments
- Materials for solar facilities
- Materials for biological transformation
The last MaterialsEuroRoads event on 13th December 2017
The last MaterialsEuroRoads event was a workshop held in Brussels on the 13th December 2017 entitled “Materials Innovations Empowering European Industries for Global Challenges”. With discussions pertaining to the structure and content of the future framework programme FP9 (which as “Horizon Europe” will succeed Horizion2020) gaining impetus, this workshop focussed on how research on advanced innovative materials could contribute to providing solutions for clean mobility, for Industry 4.0 and for application in extreme environments.
The results of the workshop were summarised in a short report which was sent to the European Commission. An abridged version of the report can be read here.