A Female Perspective on Robotics and Information Technology: Prof. Clivia Sotomayor at Future Tech Week 2020

by Virginia Greco

ICREA Prof. Clivia Sotomayor-Torres, leader of the ICN2 Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures group, participated in the Future Tech Week 2020, an initiative of the European Innovation Council Pathfinder. She talked about PHENOMEN, the H2020 FET-Open project that she coordinates, and shared her personal experience with the European Commission FET Programme.

Between the 21st and the 25th of September 2020, the European Innovation Council hosted the Future Tech Week, an online event dedicated to the most innovative and high-risk projects currently ongoing across Europe and beyond. Throughout webinars, roundtables, interviews and project videos, the results of some of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Actions funded by the European Union were highlighted and the experience of researchers leading such projects were shared.

"A Female Perspective on Robotics and Information Technology” was also offered in one of the sessions, held on 23 September. ICREA Prof. Clivia Sotomayor-Torres, leader of the ICN2 Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures group, was invited to participate in it and talk about the H2020 FET-Open project called PHENOMEN that she leads, as well as about the follow-up of previous FET projects she took part in. PHENOMEN is a FET-Open project oriented at laying the foundations of a new information technology, based on the manipulation of phonons and their coupling to photons and radio-frequency electronics.

Prof. Cecilia Laschi, from the BioRobotics Institute of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa (Italy), who is the project coordinator of a FET project called OCTOPUS, also shared her personal experience about the FET Programme. The full interviews and discussion, hosted by Sarah Kiehne and Erich Prem (from the FETFX communication platform), are available on YouTube:

Together with the upcoming Horizon Europe — the succeeding framework of Horizon 2020 — the European Commission launched the European Innovation Council (EIC), which will focus on facilitating the development of breakthrough technologies that can bring dramatic improvements and radical disruption to crucial sectors, such as health, agriculture, information technology and transport.

Ambitious research projects, which aim at developing Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) having the potential to shape the science, society and lifestyle of tomorrow, are supported through a dedicated funding programme. The grant scheme newly adopted by the EIC is called EIC Pathfinder Pilot Programme and includes — among others — the FET-Open and FET-Proactive funding calls. This programme offers grants up to €4 million in order to allow innovators, scientists and researchers from various Member States and Associated Countries to develop novel technologies based on interdisciplinary collaboration.