Race is on for EU’s €1 billion science prize

Some call it Europe’s Got Talent for geeks. Teams of scientists from across the continent are vying for a funding bonanza that could see two of them receive up to €1 billion over 10 years to keep Europe at the cutting edge of technology.

The contest began with 26 proposals that were whittled down to six last year. Four have made it to the final round.

They include a plan to develop digital guardian angels that would keep people safe from harm; a massive data-crunching machine to simulate social, economic and technological change on our planet; an effort to craft the most accurate computer model of the human brain to date; and a team working to find better ways to produce and employ graphene — an ultra-thin material that could revolutionise manufacturing of everything from airplanes to computer chips.

The two winners will be announced by the European Union’s executive branch in Brussels on Jan 28.

Initially, each project will receive €54 million from the European Union’s research budget, an amount that will be matched by national governments and other sources. Further funding will depend on whether they reach certain milestones within the first 30 months, but over a decade it could total €1bn each.

Securing such vast sums will be made harder by the austerity measures imposed by many financially drained European governments.

Still, the senior EU official overseeing the so-called Future and Emerging Technologies Flagships programme is confident the money will be made available and insists the investment is necessary if Europe wants to match the success that the CERN labs on the Swiss-French border that have become the world’s premier centre for particle research thanks to their $10bn atom smasher.

“Supporting research and development is not a nice-to-have, it is essential because no investment means no chance for a better future,” European Commissioner Neelie Kroes said.

“And especially during a crisis we all need something positive to look ahead to. Just cutting public expenditure and austerity don’t bring new growth and jobs,” she said. One explicit aim of the programme is to encourage scientists to address not just contemporary problems but also those that could arise in future.

Climate change, ageing societies and a shortage of natural resources all loom large in predictions for Europe’s future. So far, solutions to these problems have been limited, partly because of their sheer scope.

“The world of today has become so complex that it’s beyond our control,” said Dirk Helbing, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH in Zurich.

Helbing is co-ordinator of the FuturICT team that aims to monitor the state of the planet in real time using growing mountains of data now at our fingertips. Anybody will be able to tap into the system to explore possible future scenarios in much the same way as the meteorologists can forecast the weather with a certain degree of accuracy.

A rival project led by scientists at ETH’s sister school EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, focuses less on the planetary and more on the personal.

Adrian Ionescu, a professor of nano-eletronics at EPFL, says the booming in mobile devices has concentrated mainly on communication and gaming. His team’s Guardian Angels project aims to develop wearable, self-powered gadgets than can warn their users of danger, encourage them to exercise, and collect environmental and health information that could be of use to doctors.

Ionescu claims such devices could save large sums in healthcare costs by preventing diseases and helping manage them.

One of the most promising materials for electronic devices of the future is graphene — the sole focus of a third finalist. It has been touted as a solution to problems as wide-ranging as mopping up nuclear spills, making airplanes more fuel efficient and speeding up computer chips.