3rd ESFRI Stakeholder Forum Meetup Report

3rd ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup Report Kraków, Poland 10-11 June 2025 1 ESFRI 3rd Stakeholders Forum Meetup Report Kraków, Poland 10-11 June 2025 3rd ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup Report Kraków, Poland 10-11 June 2025 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Overview ............................................................................................................. 3 Sustainability context ......................................................................................... 4 Session I: Driving Innovation and Sustainability through Research Infrastructure Industry collaboration ................................................................................................ 4 Keynote: Serge Fdida Professor with Sorbonne Université (SLICES Coordinator) .................... 4 Panel Discussion and Breakout Summary Feedback ................................................................ 5 Session II. Synergies from different Funding Sources ................................................ 8 Keynote: Allen Weeks (DG Extreme Light Infrastructure, ELI) ................................................... 8 Panel Discussion and Breakout Summary Feedback ................................................................ 9 Conclusions and recommendations .................................................................. 10 3rd ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup Report Kraków, Poland 10-11 June 2025 3 Overview The third edition of the ESFRI Stakeholder Forum meetup took place on 10-11 June in Kraków, Poland, following those in Brussels in September 20221 and Tenerife in September 20232. It focused on two topics highly relevant to the various stakeholder communities, “Driving innovation and sustainability through Research Infrastructure-Industry collaboration” and “Synergies from different funding sources”, followed by group discussions in five groups, where participants addressed relevant questions, also identified in consultation with stakeholders. There were common questions posed during the panel discussions and the breakout sessions for each of the two topics. RI-industry collaboration: 1) What challenges do research infrastructures face in staying at the cutting-edge of technology, and what are the needs for joint technology development with industry? a. What frameworks could support meeting these needs? 2) What are the challenges in accessing research infrastructures, how can we support research infrastructures in developing transnational access schemes, and what are the main barriers for industry users? 3) What are the benefits of a research infrastructure to engage in collaborations in the ecosystem around the research infrastructure, not only for scientific markets but also for markets in the public and private sector? a. What type of collaborations are most effective and how can we ensure that this leads to societal benefits? Synergies from different funding sources: 1) How can we better align national funding strategies and EU-level instruments (e.g. Horizon Europe; ERDF – European Regional Development Fund; etc.), to support the full lifecycle of research infrastructures? 2) What are the most promising examples or models of effective synergy across funding sources that have supported research infrastructures at national or regional level? What made them work? 3) Given that research infrastructures increasingly provide services for public 1 1st ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup | www.esfri.eu 2 2nd ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup | www.esfri.eu 3rd ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup Report Kraków, Poland 10-11 June 2025 4 missions and policy goals, how can funding models evolve to support both researcher access and these broader societal roles? 4) How can funding synergies be used to address chronic underfunding of human resources and operational costs, particularly in distributed research infrastructures and their national nodes? 5) How could ESFRI help ensure that funding synergies for research infrastructures in Europe are planned, predictable, and strategic? Sustainability context Elena Hoffert (ESFRI EB), Sustainability of the Research Infrastructures Ecosystem The importance of addressing the long-term sustainability issue of research infrastructures was highlighted, which has become a key agenda item particularly for distributed research infrastructures: as national nodes rely on nationalsustainability and pan-European hubs rely on the sustainability of the European agreements (or ERICs). The diversity of research infrastructures, with 63 identified on the ESFRI roadmap 2021, requires a common effort to guarantee their long-term sustainability and development. Research infrastructures need to develop a better understanding of EU and national funding sources and establish a clear methodology for calculating costs throughout their life cycle. Member States should increase coherence between national funding strategies and national research infrastructure roadmaps and implement funding monitoring instruments. Additionally, funders at all levels should promote synergy among funding sources and foster community development by supporting cooperation between research infrastructures and alignment with EU priorities. This includes supporting curiositydriven research and access to research infrastructures for top researchers across Europe, keeping in parallel a collaboration with the industrial sectors, in particular with spin-off or scale-up technology based enterprises. Session I: Driving Innovation and Sustainability through Research Infrastructure Industry collaboration Keynote: Serge Fdida Professor with Sorbonne Université (SLICES Coordinator) Sustainability is based on three key pillars, i) identity, defining the vision and mission together with the community developing it, ii) a business model to achieve the sustainable plan anchored on a multiannual financial framework and iii) a legal entity especially for the complexity of all the different funding sources. You need different skills, processes and organisation to serve both academia and industry. 3rd ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup Report Kraków, Poland 10-11 June 2025 5 For research infrastructures you need to understand what kind of services you can monetise, i.e. who is buying the services. Your ROI model needs to be adapted. Previously it was targeting blue sky research, but you need to make your model evolve to attract large industry. Large industrial companies have a stock of human capital and many of which have to be upskilled or re-skilled. Research infrastructures can become the place to support this skill development in conjunction with universities, as universities are the only place where you can get the qualification for the skills. This is a huge potential for research infrastructures that could also be monetised with respect to industry. Research infrastructures are a catalyst for the knowledge triangle of education and research and with slight adaptation of the blue sky research goal to attract industry by bringing business into this innovation triangle. Panel Discussion and Breakout Summary Feedback Moderated by Michael Arentoft (EC) Staff have to be continuously trained, otherwise you have research infrastructures that are simply just providing services. We are forced to do simultaneous technological development with education and training, at least to a first level or a first set of people that are able to capitalise on it. Companies don't know how to use a research or even a technology infrastructure. The best way of doing technology transfer is when you transfer people, you increase the capacity of companies. A good channel is former PhD students working with industry because they can bring their knowledge to other sectors, to other companies and augment significantly the value and the impact of the research, of the knowledge that the research infrastructures are generating. Somebody from the research infrastructure can be transitioned into industry to work through the problem or engage closer with the partner. It could be at a later stage, but particularly at an earlier stage level, almost somebody to be parachuted in from the research infrastructure with that expertise. These personnel have the expertise within the research infrastructure and its product offering so they can engage with industry to build that trust. If there is some kind of tool to finance research infrastructure personnel short term stays in industry, that would be very beneficial in order that later on the research infrastructure could really adapt the offer of the service and tailor it more to the needs of industry. Mobility is not only the best way for knowledge transfer and valorisation, but it needs a kind of cycling and the mobility should not be a single road that goes in one direction. At the start of their research career, we need to give the possibility in particular for young people to think about the business perspective. We need to train the staff that may not be capable of coming to a research infrastructure, but they can go to our technological infrastructures where they have the setup appropriate for this type of training on the technology development side. There are different time scales for a research infrastructure, which has a very good 3rd ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup Report Kraków, Poland 10-11 June 2025 6 idea and wants to develop something at the cutting edge taking a long time, compared to the service that you want to provide to industry. A mechanism is needed to maintain the collaboration with industry and update the needs from industry along the time of the design and construction of the research infrastructure. Whatever the research infrastructure can provide the most important thing is their expertise and the knowledge. Technology infrastructures need to collaborate more with research infrastructures, to share equipment, to share resources and to deal with more complex multidisciplinary challenges. It is the combination of research and technological infrastructures that allow us to ensure this continuum of development. Either research infrastructures enlarge their scope of intervention and develop capabilities and characteristics of technological infrastructures or research infrastructures collaborate with technological infrastructures to help finalise a product for those companies that are not able to do it. It's a trust-based relationship between industry, especially SMEs, and research infrastructures, and their researchers. It creates a virtuous circle since when you are developing and improving your services for industry, who would like to work to certain standards or protocols that can have a positive impact on the services research infrastructures will also deliver to researchers. For industry to be embedded into research infrastructures we need to have programs that are supporting joint proposals between universities and industry. We could think of something like technology-based access, more open to industry, for example, to get them involved into the development or the upgrade of instrumentation. Industry needs a safe protected environment from several points of view. Technology infrastructures, of course, can offer this kind of protected environment where you can test before you invest. We should try to get a clear connection between these protected areas and the research infrastructure, because research infrastructures could do this. Pre-commercial procurement is something that can help getting industry on board opening the possibility of new markets to them. If businesses are going to the research centre to make deep tech research, it generates additional business risk. They need to introduce new processes to the production lines and so on. The technical risk for the product, for the technology is mitigated. However, IP is an issue since research infrastructures are encouraged to generate such IP, but industry wants to have the IP, all for itself. If industrial workers engage in the laboratory, they need to develop the skills to use a laboratory. This takes a lot of time and time is money in industry. We need a program, on how to help people to come from research, with the results, with the IP to industry. People will be trained, will have enough knowledge to introduce knowledge immediately if they start to work with a company. This idea of trying to get industry fellowships to engage with an industrial partner e.g. via the Marie Curie fellowships is a priority. It's a transfer of people from research to industry. Marie Curie is a very good programme, but it remains a project-based approach with a call timeline which 3rd ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup Report Kraków, Poland 10-11 June 2025 7 doesn't always benefit an SME or startup, which has to be very fast and very effective. There appears to be, until recently, little effort from the side of the research infrastructure to engage with industry and a lack of expertise and understanding from an industrial perspective to effectively engage with research infrastructures. A program called the ILO program, Industry Liaisons officers, was funded for the research infrastructures to engage closer with industry. We should help research infrastructures recruit business development managers, to go out and help generate revenue and raise awareness. We need to consider creating noncompetitive knowledge platforms to allow cross domain expertise to be shared among research infrastructures so that they can upskill, create talent, help develop various personnel within research infrastructures in one domain. Issues with state aid can arise when providing strategic support. Focusing support on just one or two companies may violate state aid rules, and spreading limited support across many actors often has little impact. In Canada, collaboration among federal labs, industry, and public administrators helps accelerate the process— from research and infrastructure development to market-ready products—by fostering coordinated efforts between industry, federal agencies, and regulators. Maybe something for the Joint Research Centres putting together research laboratory, research infrastructure and industry but also the regulatory aspect. INFRATECH calls are really very useful and interesting for all communities. However, there is a gap between the end of the INFRATECH calls and the implementation of the results in reality. We need to find some mechanisms to fill in this gap between Infratech and the implementation of the results. There are already different examples of good existing collaborations between research infrastructures and industrial users, and we should be able to better communicate about them and make them known to our decision makers, funders and whole communities. Collaboration with industrial users is necessary because these users can identify the necessary cutting-edge technologies. Thanks to this identification, research infrastructures can develop and suggest new services and also better develop the existing tools of research infrastructures. One of the challenges is that research infrastructures are not designed for visualisation or marketing of knowledge. There is an obvious lack of venture capital and very little systemic support to small and medium sized enterprises, and this may hamper their engagement into research, infrastructure, business and services provided by research infrastructures. In certain domains, the results of research infrastructures and their services are not expressed solely in monetary means and industry is not necessarily the only end user. It is very important to note that research infrastructures are in a way very much bound not only to scientific results but produce a lot of socio economic and societal 3rd ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup Report Kraków, Poland 10-11 June 2025 8 impact. Starting from the public value and mission of the research infrastructures they can have a voice of neutrality and contribute in a trusted way to public discussions or the science policy debate. Research infrastructures have a strong role in reestablishing trust in science in Europe and elsewhere and mobilising an interest in science. There is a lack of a mapping of research infrastructures and technology infrastructures and services that they provide. A lack of a landscape for collaboration and a need to let industry understand what research infrastructures have to offer working on cataloguing of services. To do that over a whole landscape is quite a challenge. Our industry is reluctant to assume many risks but the sharing of infrastructures, the purchase of them, discussing challenges with industry at a very early stage is beneficial for both industry and research infrastructures as they even come up with solutions to their own problems, they didn't know they had. Research infrastructures need to engage with industry much earlier at a real foundational level, so trust and a rapport can be built up. We need to change the paradigm that we had where we almost punished research infrastructures on the roadmap for being too close to industry. Instead, we should adopt a more flexible, less rigid structure that allows research infrastructures to adapt as needed. Session II. Synergies from different Funding Sources Keynote: Allen Weeks (DG Extreme Light Infrastructure, ELI) Allen Weeks highlighted the root causes of the EU's weak innovation performance. One of the main issues is the lower private R&D investment in the EU, with significantly lower private sector R&D spending compared to global leaders. This creates a substantial deficit, as EU businesses invest less in research and development. Additionally, the public R&D spending in the EU is relatively high, but it is fragmented across Member States and lacks sufficient EU-wide coordination. This may lead to duplication and missed opportunities for large-scale, breakthrough projects. The EU innovation ecosystem is fragmented, with limited cross-border collaboration among researchers and innovators. A coordinated approach is lacking for shared, large-scale research infrastructures, which hinders the development of a world-leading research and technological system. Most Member States cannot achieve the necessary scale in their financial or organisational capacities, which calls for a more strategic coordinated approach with a central role for the EU. The EU suffers from weaker top-tier academia, with fewer EU universities ranking among the world's elite research institutions. This makes it more challenging to attract global talent and weak industry-academia links hinder innovation transfer. There is the need for a more coordinated approach to public R&D spending, with a 3rd ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup Report Kraków, Poland 10-11 June 2025 9 focus on EU-wide priorities and better access to funding opportunities. The importance of developing a world-leading research and technological infrastructure, capable of serving the whole European ecosystem, and the need for more academic excellence at the top universities was highlighted. Panel Discussion and Breakout Summary Feedback Moderated by Antje Keppler (Euro-BioImaging Bio-Hub) The potential for exploiting synergies between institutional, regional, national, European, and global research infrastructure funding streams was explored. The discussions highlighted the need for better alignment between national funding strategies and EU-level instruments, such as Horizon Europe and the European Regional Development Fund, to support the full lifecycle of research infrastructures. The importance of looking beyond traditional funding sources and exploring new financing models, including public-private partnerships and coinvestment from private funds was emphasised. There is a need for mobilisation, pooling, and prioritisation of investments to support research infrastructures, particularly in areas such as distributed research infrastructures and their national nodes. Funding models need to evolve to support both researcher access and the broader societal roles of research infrastructures, including their contribution to public missions and policy goals. It is important to support business development teams and other initiatives financially which can help research infrastructures achieve their full potential. There is a need for a more strategic and coordinated approach to funding research infrastructures, including the use of funding synergies to address chronic underfunding of human resources and operational costs. The importance of collaboration, exchange of human capital, working together to achieve common goals, and the potential for ESFRI to play a key role in ensuring that funding synergies for research infrastructures in Europe are planned, predictable, and strategic were all highlighted. Research infrastructures require a more coordinated and strategic approach to funding, including the use of funding synergies to support their full lifecycle. There is a need for new funding models that can combine public and private funding sources and for a greater emphasis on supporting the broader societal roles of research infrastructures. Additionally, the panel emphasised the importance of quantifying spending on research infrastructures and improving horizontal communication at the level of the Ministries and the European Commission. There is a need for an incentive from the European Commission to facilitate interministerial meetings and promote funding synergies, as well as diminishing difficulties in cross-border money flows for a regional impact of research infrastructures. Analyses of the socio-economic and societal impact of research infrastructures are required to convince governments of their value across sectorial