Baltic TRAM – Transnational Research Access in MacroRegion
Project duration: 36 months starting from March 2016
Project budget: 4 173 157 €
Project coordinator: DESY (Germany)
No. of project partners: 16
The challenge behind Baltic TRAM is, that investments in research infrastructure (RI) do not reflect sustainable demand, do not take into account sufficiently Smart Specialization Strategies (S3) of areas, and do not promote effectively enough meaningful interactions between RI and businesses. Additionally community in connection to RI is weak. There is also an inadequate communication of chances for using RI and weak networking between RI and with industrial users. Futher more funding programmes for Small and Medium size enterprises (SME) on national and transnational level for use inspired basic research are missing. It is a social challenge to speed up the implementation of research results from basic and applied research in industry. The Science Link (SL) project has shown that more cooperation is needed on national level combinedwith an international cooperation.
RI in the field of analytics are “key technology” in research with industry. Important for dealing with these challenges are RI, which cost more than 1 Mio euro (e.g. electron microscopes, spectroscopes and tomographs).
Baltic TRAM will thus address three levels:
1. First of all the market failure “unsustainable demand for RI” will be addressed and national structures/networks which provide regional service and support the community will be established. Demands on thenational networks (e.g.types of stakeholders) arise from the present national/regional structure and the future requirements formulated in the national roadmaps and national/regional S3.
2. Furthermore, analytical research activities and experiences will be exchanged via the transnational structure.
3. Pilot projects are intended for selected areas (e.g. nanotechnologies, food technology) for testing the solutions developed for national and transnational networks and lead to evaluation results. Project partners willsupport companies with consultation and research using de minimis rules for SME.
These activities will strengthen the capacities of public administration, companies and RI in the BSR states and, through international networking, lead to a balanced use of and cooperation between the RI. As interface Industrial Research Centers will operate the regional networks of cooperating RI and organise transnational cooperation.
At the same time there is need to make data freely accessible. The project will attempt to define requirements, structures and agreements for Open Data Access with companies carrying out research activities and totest it in a pilot project in Finland.