Europe increases funds for "blue sky" IT research

The European Commission announces extra cash for investigation into emerging technologies

EC provides extra funds for Blue Sky research

The European Commission has announced extra funding for "blue sky" information and communications technology research at the first European Future Technologies Conference in Prague.

The budget increase came at the launch of the conference, described as " Science Beyond Fiction", and will add 70 per cent extra cash by 2013, reaching €170m annually.

The web site for the conference describes the current scheme, called Future and Emerging Technologies (FET), as “high-risk research activities in nanotechnologies, quantum physics, biochemistry, swarm robotics, or brain-inspired computing.”

Among FET’s objectives is “to start new fields of research, to foresee new trends and to build up collaborative teams across Europe.” This is being achieved by two complementary approaches called FET-Open and FET-Proactive.

The FET-Open approach is a "roots-up" angle for exploring and nurturing new research trends, helping “emerging research communities to mature.” FET-Proactive concentrates on more foundational research supporting “initial developments on long-term research and technological innovation.”

Both approaches will tie into the recently announced Ethical Issues of Emerging ICT Applications (ETICA) project, led by Leicester’s De Montfort University, which seeks to understand the ethical and social risks associated with technologies likely to enter common use over the next 10 to 15 years.