Workpackage 3 ("Funding QIST in Europe") aims at analysing the regional structures, already existing funding programmes, etc. in order to derive some suggestions to national funding organisations with the purpose of achieving a more efficient strategy to exploit the potential of QIST. One of the main results attained by this WP has been the development of a new approach in the way of evaluating high risk scientific projects, which might be useful for the practice of different funding agencies.
As far as the last phase of the project is concerned, WP3 will endeavour to create an accurate, complete and in-depth picture of QIPC funding in Europe. As a basic step, a structured comprehensive list of all funding agencies involved in QIPC will be compiled, building on the existing data obtained in the first part of the project. From this collection of funding agencies, the funding patterns of QIPC will be identified by again collecting trustful, quantitative and complete data that can be compared to give an ensemble view. A last step, more qualitative, will allow understanding the patterns of funding at the European level.
A large amount of time (6 months) will be devoted to getting a complete and accurate directory of funding agencies. This list will be made by directly contacting the groups, through a questionnaire and phone calls, which is the best way to ensure that the list is complete. The funding agencies will be categorized by type (state, private, industrial) and by size (local, regional, national, European or world-wide). This directory will be made available to the community on the ERA websites. In parallel with building this directory, the funding organisations will be contacted individually, in order to obtain more quantitative information. A collaboration will be established with the ministry of science and technology of Austria, which could then contact and gather information from the corresponding European ministries, which account for a large part of the funding in QIPC. If this collaboration is successful, we can therefore focus on the other funding agencies and on gathering information directly from the groups. Completeness and coherence of the collected data has to be the target of this task. However, given the difficulty encountered in the past to gather this kind of information, this aim will probably not be totally fulfilled, at least not for all the information we want to gather. We therefore will make an effort to extract from a partial picture some objectives patterns and trends, in order to provide objective recommendations.
Finally, WP3 will address and analyze the patterns and mechanisms of funding, by consulting both the groups and the funding agencies, whether in the form of a survey sent to the research groups and the funding agencies, or, alternatively, in the form of a case study by focusing on a couple of groups or agencies willing to participate. WP3 will ultimately deliver a report of funding mechanisms for QIPC in Europe, which will include some recommendations for better coordination of funding at the EC level.
WP3 (second year) will be led for this last phase of the project by Prof. Anton Zeilinger from OAW (Austria)
Workpackage 3 ("Elaboration of Co-ordination Measures") will analyse the strengths and structures, already existing collaborations, etc.
From this analysis will derive some measures how clusters of European institutions can be both on regional and on thematic level - in order to utilise synergies by combining experiences of groups that work in the same or in complementary QIST- topics. These measures will contain suggestions, which organisations scientific and on policy level should be involved and how the collaboration organised.
The main focus of this workpackage will be to propose regional thematic Centers of Excellence (CoEx) and QIST-clusters within Europe.
The challenge of WP3 will not only be the elaboration of measures on a transnational or European level. The responsibility of WP3 will be the elaboration of coordination measures with other research areas (United States of America, Japan, Canada, Australia, ...) as well. Therefore the contact to relevant policy players all over the world will be established to start an international discussion process about international synergies.
WP3 (first year) will be led by Christian Monyk from ARCS (Austria).