Activity Report

Introduction and workshop programme

The 4^th and final workshop of NOSE II (7 – 8 November, 2005) was oriented towards the future opportunities and needs in the field especially in view of the upcoming framework programme 7 (FP7). By choosing Istanbul as the location of the venue it was intended to bridge also between western European partners as well as Associate Candidate Countries (ACCs).

Bringing members from NOSE II in contact with potential users and developers both from academia as well as industry (especially also from Turkey) a very lively forum was generated which was revealing the needs and expectations from all sides. The host Prof. Z.Z. Öztürk (Gebze Institute of Technology) was performing very well by brining together a large amount of regional stakeholders.

The concept of the meeting has been to have presentations as well as discussion rounds giving also some time in the evening for personal dialogue.

After a welcome and an introduction of each workshop participant describing his/her interests and background (35 participants, the list of participants is included as Annex 2) currently ongoing networks besides NOSEII have been presented by Carmen Moldovan (Mina-EAST, MINOS handled by Bucharest) and Udo Weimar (GOSPEL handled by Tübingen) (see overview in Table 1).

Table 1: Basic information provided at the NOSE II Workshop in Istanbul.

All these networks are having interfaces also for new members who would like to join in and all of the interested parties have been encouraged to apply for (associated) memberships without any reservation. All of this information was received very well; especially the role of the interface of MINOS to Turkey and other ACCs as well as NMS (New Member States) was stressed and also understood by the participants.

Two other lectures during the workshop provided the participants with the available information on FP7 relevant to the NOSE II fields. The most important topics in which the NOSE community is foreseen to have the most impact were identified and discussed in general.

The outlook to FP7 given by Selçuk Taral was pointing out the interest to the European Technology Platforms (ETPs). Besides the cooperative research (Cooperation) and the basic studies (Ideas) the consultation of all stakeholders in one domain will be important for an effective use of tax-payers money. As it was discussed in the meeting, the work of partners in the NOSE community is of horizontal character having impact and influence on a number of activities and platforms, so it is important to keep in touch especially with the respective large enterprises in the different domains. Tübingen having contact to a number of them as well as Bucharest were offering their assistance to the NOSE members to actively link the interests and bring the respective stakeholders together. By that it will be also possible to support the generation of the Strategic Research Agendas (SRAs) in the different domains and keep the interest of the NOSE community alive.

The second half of the first day was used to give the opportunity to individuals (members as well as non-members) to present an overview of activities, latest results, as well as offers for cooperation either directly or publicly funded (see Table 2 for an overview). A short summary of the first day was generated in order to give an overview in the morning of the second day as a primer for the subsequent group work.

Table 2: Presentations by participants at the NOSE II Workshop in Istanbul.

The discussion based on the presentations of the participants used up most of the day on Tuesday. The outcome of the discussion in subgroups and among the whole audience is summarized in the next section.

Thanking the organizers again was ending the successful meeting on Tuesday afternoon.

Outcome of discussion rounds:

The subsequent list has to be seen in conjunction with the structure of FP7 as it is discussed actually:

• Cooperation (cooperative research as very well known by existing programmes)
• Ideas (“new” form of basic research on the European Scale à European Research Council)
• People (existing mechanisms like Marie Curie programs)
• Capacities (support e.g. of SMEs)

The interests during the workshop were classified into:

• Fundamentals > “Ideas”; basic research
• “Nano” , self assembly > “Cooperation”; Materials
• Data processing, standardisation > “Cooperation”; ICT
• Microsensors > “Cooperation”; ICT (Information and Communication Technologies)
• “spectrometers” > “Cooperation”; Security
• Medical (illness) > “Cooperation”; Health

In order to be able to discus all these interests effectively group work was organized and the above listed topics were discussed. In the afternoon session of the second day the outcome of this group discussion was presented by a “rapporteur” to all workshop participants. This outcome shall be presented in brief in the following sections:

Nanotechnologies for sensitive materials

Rapporteur: Mika Harbeck (IPC, Tübingen, Germany)

The finding has been that both programmes “cooperative research” as well as “ideas” (basic research) are required to make use of the “quality” of nano-materials. It will be important to understand the basic physics and chemistry which is influenced by the mesoscopic dimensions but also pay attention to requirements of groups trying to exploit these features namely e.g. reproducibility, producibility, etc. Here the statements of the industrial participants were very clear: If the new materials have supreme quality compared to more traditional materials (e.g. in higher sensitivity which is required for new application areas) it has to be also possible to produce these materials on an industrial scale.

As a starting point it will be important to generate a first data base of available materials and production methods based upon a literature search and input from the community (in the discussion the term “avoiding to reinvent the wheel” was often stressed). Based upon that it will be easier to perform systematic studies and optimise existing technologies for the production. Here several issues were brought up: From the practical point of view it has to be producible, from the engineering point of view one should look around what’s available in other fields and try to import it here (à catalysis) and from the theoretical point of view one should try to apply computational models for the prediction of real world parameters.

As a consequence of the discussion a closer cooperation between the respective organisations has been agreed and it will be in all interest to prepare in the long run a FP7 activity which might be either in the “ideas” or in the “cooperation” field depending on the outcome of the a.m. screening studies.