The ENRIITC project strives to optimise the societal impact of Research Infrastructures by improving the engagement between RIs and industry in EU Member States.

Faced with the effects of the war in Ukraine, inflation and raw material bottlenecks, the European states are grappling with the delivery of ambitious Next Generation EU post-pandemic recovery projects in the midst of also a rising energy crisis and green transition ambitions.

Interest is strong in exploiting the innovation potential of RIs that are increasingly recognised as potential key partners for companies developing cutting-edge new health, green and digital transformation applications and services across industrial sectors.

In this scenario of heightened expectations and new opportunities for both RIs and companies, the ENRIITC “hub and spoke” model presented in the report D3.1, of pan-EU, one-stop-shop innovation officers’ multiplier network and support service working specifically to spur new RI-industry connections is poised to play an increasingly important role.

And with these structures on the table, the role of the principal multiplier persons, Industrial Liaisons Officers working at a national level and Industrial Contact Officers employed at the RIs, should be defined more closely.

The new ENRIITC report D3.5 offers a set of recommendations in the form of a vademecum of practical steps and Key Performance Indicators for focusing the effort of ICOs and ILOs and maximizing the impact.

The report makes specific recommendations of actions to:

• Strengthen RIs role as key players and partners in the wider European innovation ecosystem
• Professionalise and standardise the ILO and ICO competencies, job descriptions, training and career paths in Europe
• Prioritise duties, initiatives and KPIs ILOs and ICOs need to undertake to make the ENRIITC Strategy for RI-Industry Cooperation (detailed in D3.2) a success
• Help bridge the innovation gap by supporting the early development of key technologies for use in new societal applications.

The eRImote project is the first to consider solutions for digital and remote service provision across RI domains and to look for transferable practices and new developments that will improve accessibility and resilience of RI infrastructures.

While existing processes will be collected, eRImote will also explore new solutions using defined use cases to develop and test their implementation in RI scenarios.

This will take us beyond the state-of-the-art for concrete solutions.

The eRImote consortium is relatively small with eight beneficiary participants representing four main ESFRI RI Roadmap domains.

However, the consortium extends much more broadly through the existing contacts and networking partners of each of the project participants, increasing the reach out to hundreds of individuals, other European and global RIs, scientific networks, RI users, industry partners and policy makers.

Learn more about the project here!

Welcome to the recap of #ENRIITCyourCoffee episode three of our fifth season. We continued with the topic of the previous episode that you can check out here – neutrons. We had the pleasure of hearing from Sandra Cabeza, Co-responsible scientist at SALSA Stress Diffractometer, Institute Laue Langevin (ILL).

What has been done before?

Sandra started off by explaining how neutron string diffraction characterisation is not a novel topic and there have already been efforts worldwide that culminated with a technological trend assessment in 2001. All the definitions and best practices were laid down (which are the hkR planes to measure in a monochromatic instrument) for a good starting point for system recession actions, or neutral materials and stress scanning. Unfortunately, these are general approaches for instrument alignment procedures and a broad scope of definitions and equations.

What is done now?

Sandra gives a great overview of the current communities and efforts on neutron strain result harmonisation at 03:04 in the video below. Broadly those can be divided into three:

1. Neutron Techniques Standardisation for Structural Integrity (NET) – An in-kind working group between neutron sources, synchrotron sources, industry and academy to assess the reliability of the characterization of resilience stress through diffraction methods. Sandra describes this.
2. BrigtNESS2 – Neutral ecosystem for sustainable service with science. This is to ensure the long-term sustainability of the user community, particularly for the engineering community.
3. EAISTRESS – More industrially oriented and the main focus is on this data exchange procedures

Pilot projects for a common Neutron Quality Label for residual stress analysis

Sandra mentions that it has been a significant effort in developing definitions and measurements between all the institutes. She summarises the goal of the project well (at 05:23 in the video): to build confidence in the industry, meaning there is a method with ISO technological assessment standards and round-robin tests across the world.

“Therefore we said let’s stick together let’s define the similar samples that we have for aligning our instruments and reporting this precision and accuracy of the values. Let’s decide on a common sample and let’s start from scratch.”

Overall the goal was to define a protocol and a more precise guideline building on the ISO standard in addition to a common report template so we all know what is important. Check out the internal certification exercise below at 06:43.

From the internal certification exercise with 4 institutions they agreed that after the exercise all parties improved on 6 points as more efficient in calibration procedures, more accurate in sample alignment system, more robust in data analysis for entry scans and 3 more points that you can see from Sandra’s presentation at 09:51 in the video.

Later on, they complimented the exercise with an Airbus cylinder measurement with neutrons and all institutions had a similar result.

“We proved that we could actually enhance the industrial access to multiple facilities.”

In conclusion, Sandra confirmed that the results of the pilot projects meant that the collaborative method has given them a significant advantage both scientifically and economically. In the spirit of true collaboration, all conditions can be extended to other facilities and include more partners.

“The main or the ultimate objective of the BrightNESS² is this long-term sustainability of the community so I think we have proven here a good example that this is feasible when we work together.”

This was the end of Sandra’s presentation and the floor was open for the rest of our coffee break to pick Sandra’s brain for a great collaboration experience.

Find out more and browse the previous episodes here.

Innovation is created from the interaction and collaboration between science and business. Companies need support and simpler access to the opportunities for collaborations with Research Infrastructures (RIs). The ENRIITC project has built a pan-European network of national Industrial Liaison Officers and Industrial Contact Officers at Research Infrastructures (ILOs and ICOs). The establishment of a formal network will enable industry to become a full partner of RIs whether as a user, supplier, or co-creator.

ENRIITC supports the establishment of strategic, cross-border partnerships between industry and research infrastructures. A key instrumental milestone would be the establishment of a formal and sustainable hub supporting the new pan-European ICO and ILO network.

The core activity of the hub is to provide training activities, a repository of information and best practices, support for ICOs/ILOs. The hub should also host an interaction platform for ILOs and ICOs to discuss and optimize their engagement with industry and facilitate the flow of requests from companies. The knowledge from ENRIITC and other relevant projects will be hosted in the repository accessible to ILOs and ICOs and the content will continuously be improved and matured based on the experiences of the network participants.

The consolidation of a pan-European ICO and ILO network relies on the formation of the central “Innovation and Industry Services Central Support Hub”. This will be the centre of a hub-and-spoke network to support ICOs and ILOs in building fruitful relationships and exploiting the RIs innovation potential.

Here below a list of the missions that the proposed pan-European “Innovation and Industry Services Central Support Hub” will have.

1. Define and update the training path and opportunities for ICOs and ILOs;
2. Offer an exchange platform for collaboration between ILOs/ILOs on innovation;
3. Coordinate the support offer provided to ICOs and ILOs;
4. Offering a regular source of RI innovation success stories to complement those on RI scientific achievements, and operate an identity for ILOs and ICOs towards other European entities;
5. Coordinate a network level approach with other pan-European entities, such as:

• EIT, for building new partnerships with industry and aligning the policy with the needs of industry;
• EIROFORUM, for coordinating industry aspects of Big Science facilities;
• BSBF International Organising Committee, for collaboration and communication about the Big Science Business Forum event;
• EOSC DIH, for being aligned with the actions taken to facilitate industry in finding useful services at EOSC level.

Key stakeholders in the hub

Industry Contact Officers (ICO) are research infrastructure staff in charge of developing business relations with all potential industrial suppliers of innovative components or services as well as encouraging the economical use of their facility by private players.

Industry Liaison Officers (ILO) are generally officially appointed by the Member States and Associated Countries to stimulate the collaboration among the national industry and the international research infrastructures, providing advice on business opportunities, R&D collaborations, calls for tenders and industrial services.

PERIIA (www.periia.eu) is the informal association of individuals that are nationally appointed Industrial Liaison Officer (ILO) or Purchasing Advisor (PA) to any of the European Big Science Organisations, such as ESO, ESS, ESA, F4E/ITER, CERN, ESRF, XFEL, EMBL, and ILL. The PERIIA board (7 persons) is elected at a General Assembly typically convened during the Big Science Business Forum or the ITER Business Forum. The PERIIA board is proposed as the governing body for the industrial supplier aspects of the hub.

RI board is a new governance structure that should represent the group of ESFRI RIs, non-ESFRI transnational RIs and national RIs that are connected to the hub. The detailed role, members and governance model of the board should be defined in a dialogue with the RIs. The board is proposed as the governing body for the industrial user aspects of the hub.

Read more about ENRIITC Deliverable 3.1 here.