European Activities in Nanoscience Education and Training
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European Activities in Nanoscience Education and Training Marie-Isabelle Baraton1, Raymond Monk2, and Renzo Tomellini2 1 SPCTS – UMR CNRS 6638, Faculty of Sciences, University of Limoges, 123 Avenue Albert Thomas, Limoges, 87060, France 2 Directorate-General for Research, Industrial Technologies Directorate, European Commission, Brussels, 1049, Belgium ABSTRACT This paper reviews salient features of the European initiatives to promote education in the field of nanosciences and nanotechnologies. Not only funding issues but also inherent cultural specificities are taken into account to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the European model to take up the challenge of the global economy. Multidisciplinarity and mobility of researchers appear to be key to foster excellence, whereas a reappraisal of curricula is necessary.
INTRODUCTION The European Union (EU) comprises 25 European countries with 450 million people. The founding members were Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, France, Italy and the Netherlands. In 1973 Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom joined followed by Greece in 1981, Spain and Portugal in 1986 and Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995. The European Union welcomed ten new countries in 2004: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Most research in the EU is carried out by individual countries, many of which have programmes for nanosciences and nanotechnologies (N&N). Nevertheless, a significant proportion of research and development (R&D) is supported via so-called Framework Programmes which are managed by the European Commission (EC). Since the beginning of the 1980s, these programmes have promoted greater integration and cooperation between research teams across Europe – a real "European Research Area" has been taking shape. As well as the Member States, the Framework Programmes also involve countries that are candidates to join the EU (Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Turkey) and Associated States (Iceland, Israel, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland) that provide a financial contribution as part of an international cooperation agreement. Europe recognised the potential of nanotechnology early and some countries, e.g. the United Kingdom, started national R&D programmes as far back as the mid 1980s. Despite the fact that some countries do not have specific nanotechnology initiatives, relevant R&D is often embedded within other programmes (e.g. biotechnology, microtechnology, etc). At the European level, collaborative nanotechnology R&D has been supported in the 4th (1994-1998) and 5th EU Framework Programmes (1998-2002), the latter with around 45 M€ € /year. In the case of the current 6th Framework Programme (2003-2006), N&N have been identified as a priority and is receiving on average around 250 M€€ /year of support. Taken together with the investments in EU and Associated States, overall European public investment in N&N R&D have risen from around €€ 200 million in 1997 to the present level of around €€ 1.5 billion. Examining
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