To coincide with Graphene Week2014, the Graphene Flagship is proud to announce that today one of the largest-ever European research initiatives is doubling in size. 66 new partners are being invited to join the consortium following the results of a €9 million competitive call. While most partners are universities and research institutes, the share of companies, mainly SMEs, involved is increasing. This shows the growing interest of economic actors in graphene. The partnership now includes more than 140 organisations from 23 countries. It is fully set to take ‘wonder material’ graphene and related layered materials from academic laboratories to everyday use.

The 66 new partners come from 19 countries, six of which are new to the consortium: Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Israel.

The only partner to join Graphene flagship from Hungary is László P. Biró, Corresponding Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, head of Nanostructures Group of the Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science (MFA); he said: “The Graphene Flagship gives us an exciting opportunity to explore graphene-based nanoarchitectures, which we have researched during the last ten years, but on different length scale. Through the flagship’s network and together with the consortium, we want to evaluate the possibilities for sustainable applications in electromagnetic shielding and high frequency devices of the bioinspired design principles.”

The Graphene Flagship@GrapheneCA represents a European investment of €1 billion over the next 10 years. It is part of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagships@FETFlagships announced by the European Commission in January 2013. The goal of the FET Flagships programme is to encourage visionary research with the potential to deliver breakthroughs and major benefits for European society and industry. FET Flagships are highly ambitious initiatives involving close collaboration with national and regional funding agencies, industry and partners from outside the European Union.

The full press release is availabe at: http://graphene-flagship.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Press-Release_Graphene-Flagship-Competitive-Call-GF-.pdf

HAS NEWS, 25/06/2014 : Researchers of MTA join European Union’s Graphene Flagship project