ESTEEM3 Innovation Strategy Workshop

ESTEEM3 Innovation Strategy Workshop

Participants of the Workshop on Innovation strategy

The workshop was attended by 85 participants from different european countries. Both the participants and the organizers were satisfied at the end of the workshop and said goodbye to each other with new contacts and new ideas.

After each session, a Question & Answer session was also proposed to the participants.

A white paper on an innovation strategy will be published for distribution to research institutions, industry, and policy makers based on the discussions and debates collected during this workshop.

Introduction and concept

ESTEEM3 – Enabling Science and Technology through European Electron Microscopy – is an EU-funded project for electron microscopy, which aims at providing access to the leading European state-of-the-art electron microscopy research infrastructures, facilitating and extending transnational access services of the most powerful atomic scale characterization techniques in advanced electron microscopy research to a wide range of academic and industrial research communities for the analysis and engineering of novel materials in physical, chemical and biological sciences.

Specimen preparations is the initial key step in various transmission electron microscopy (TEM) investigations, especially for the applications of sophisticated instruments with monochromators, aberration correctors, high-end detectors, and energy filters. The quality of the TEM specimen plays a direct role in the quality of the results obtained on the microscope. Therefore, knowing how to prepare high‐quality TEM specimens and advancing related skills are crucial.

This online workshop focused on bringing together electron microscopy communities to define an innovation strategy and capture new ideas for future developments in TEM. A focus has been done on necessary developments of TEM to support industrial and academic needs (user needs) and instrument development.
Participants found out information about new technologies, products, services, instrumentation, and access visibility of opportunities for R&D collaborations.

Targeted audience

This workshop targeted all industry professionals, researchers, and policy makers interested in innovation, including:

• Research Organizations operating European Research Infrastructure (RI) or interested in RI data and services
• TEM manufacturers and private companies offering scientific instrumentation or services in the field of electron microscopy
• Industrial End-Users looking for new technologies/services
• Electron microscopy Networks interested in enhancing their monitoring capacities
• Policy-makers including representatives from funding agencies and other responsible bodies, interested in enhancing their capacity to inform, monitor and report on national and international microscopy directives

Scientific content and program

This workshop was divided into three sessions, as follows: 

Session 1 - "Electron microscopy (big and small) data analysis with the Open Source software & Open Source community" 

• Francisco de la Peña, Professor and Researcher at University of Lille, on HyperSpy: multi-dimensional data analysis
• Andrew Götz, PaNOSC coordinator and Head of the Software Group at the ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility) on TANGO
• Marc Portier, VLIZ, by EOSC Life on “How is open science similar to being vegetarian?”

Session 2 - “How companies become engaged with Research Infrastructures?”

• Dr Corrado R. Spinella, Department of Physical Science and Technology of Matter presso, IMM-CNR
• Anne-Charlotte Joubert, ENRIITC Coordinator (European Network of Research Infrastructures and Industry for Collaboration)
• Arnauld Leservot, Industrial Partnerhsip Officer for Research infrastructures, French Ministry of Research and Innovation
• Ed Mitchell, Head of business development, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESFR)
• Bert Freitag, Technology Director, Thermo Fisher Scientific

Session 3 - "SME Involvement/Challenge and Key Aspects for advanced technology Procurement"

• Patricia Postigo McLaughlin, Policy Officer, European Commission, “The EU’s transnational access programme and industrial users, lessons learnt”
• Alejandro Sanchez, Associate Director and Industrial Liaison Officer, ALBA Synchrotron, co-leader of the SME access programme TamaTA in the CALIPSOplus, LEAPS-INNOV and ReMAde@ARI projects, “TAMATA programme: Boosting SME innovation”

Among the speakers, a full diversity of experts coming from the academic and the industry were present. They debated around the different sessions.

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 823717 – ESTEEM3.