Accelerating Photonics Deployment via one Stop Shop Advanced Technology Access for Researchers

Project Information

ACTPHAST 4R

Grant agreement ID: 825051

DOI

10.3030/825051

Project closed

EC signature date 12 November 2018

Start date 1 January 2019

End date 31 December 2023

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 6 128 636,25

EU contribution

€ 6 000 000,00

Coordinated by

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ACTPHAST 4R (Accelerating Photonics Deployment via one Stop Shop Advanced Technology Access for Researchers)

Reporting period: 2022-01-01 to 2023-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Photonics technologies, in the form of sensors, optical fibres, special lenses, LEDs, photonic integrated circuits and quantum technology amongst many others, will be used to launch all sorts of new and better products and processes in wide-ranging end-user applications of major societal benefit.
Europe is a global leader in disruptive photonics research, and home to many of the world’s most advanced photonics research institutes and photonics technology platforms. This excellent research base has enabled Europe to establish a strong position in the global photonics market. The critical challenge for Europe is to ensure that it extracts the maximum societal and economic benefits from the hundreds of millions of euros invested to date in fundamental research in photonics, and in the wonderfully strong base of advanced photonics technologies within Europe’s top research institutes.
ACTPHAST4R was established to address this challenge and opportunity for Europe. ACTPHAST4R provided wonderful new opportunities to bridge the gap between fundamental research (TRL1-2) and applied research and innovation (TRL4-5) with the key objectives of both strengthening the European innovation ecosystem and realising improved cross-fertilisation between photonics and other key-enabling technologies. As such, ACTPHAST4R was an ambitious project which aimed for the first time in Europe to open up access to a pan-European innovation support model for European researchers seeking to deploy cutting-edge photonics technologies for the purpose of developing demonstrators for wide-ranging scientific breakthrough concepts.
In fulfilling its mission, ACTPHAST4R overcame significant barriers, in particular the status quo of the traditional “siloed” approach to scientific valorisation taken by European research institutions, as well as the Covid pandemic which severely disrupted the project’s activities, in order to finally deliver strong results and impact. Overall, ACTPHAST4R provided a successful demonstration of the innovation support model for researchers in the domain of photonics which has been disseminated widely across the European regions and has been taken up in the development of the next generation Photonics Innovation Factory for Europe in the framework of Horizon Europe.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The ACTPHAST4R project ran for a total of 60 months from 2019 to 2023 which included a 12-month extension due to the impact of Covid which placed severe restrictions on the work plan of the project for a total of 25 months from March 2020 (M15) to April 2022 (M40). A Covid mitigation plan was successfully developed and implemented by the project coordinator. Together with the extended timeline, this enabled ACTPHAST4R to achieve excellent results by the end of the project. The following project results were achieved:
A total of 50 deep innovation support projects were granted and executed with carefully selected use cases of researchers with high potential impact for further valorisation of the innovation activities.
The granted innovation projects fully represented the breadth and depth of the desired impact of ACTPHAST4R on the European innovation ecosystem, in particular:
84% cross-border projects involving researchers from 19 different European member states.
80% of the supported researchers were “non-photonics”, i.e. their primary research focus was in another scientific domain other than photonics, and 66% of the innovation projects involved cross-fertilisation of photonics with other key enabling technologies from 18 other scientific domains of the supported researchers.
All 7 photonics technology platforms offered by ACTPHAST4R were well-represented in the innovation projects.
The full supply chain of innovation support activities, from modelling & design to prototyping to measurement & characterisation to packaging and testing, were involved in the innovation projects with 3 activities involved on average per innovation project.
The average targeted duration of the innovation projects was 8,6 months.
A TRL advancement of 1,6 levels was delivered on average across the innovation projects.
An average R&I expenditure leverage factor of 1,6 times on the EC financial subsidy was delivered by the innovation projects based on an overall average innovation project budget of 84k€ and an average ACTPHAST 4R subsidy of 53k€ per project.
High satisfaction scores were reported by the supported researchers with an average of 4 out of 5 for the innovation supports delivered.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Although the total number of granted innovation projects was lower in the end than what was originally expected (50 innovation projects as opposed to 100) due mainly to the disruptions caused by Covid, the high quality of those 50 innovation projects meant that ACTPHAST4R still achieved and in some cases even exceeded the substantial impact levels which were originally targeted, as demonstrated by the following results.
12 new spinout companies by the supported researchers of which 7 of the new spinouts are already founded and 5 are in early incubation / planning, exceeding the original target of 10 new spinouts in early incubation.
A combined total of over 18M€ in new growth capital and 54 new jobs created by the 7 spin-out companies already founded, exceeding the original target of 15M€ in new growth capital and 50 jobs.
Across the 50 granted innovation projects, all of them were aimed at building demonstrators, 44 of them were planning joint publications, 33 of them were planning to make an new IP deposit, and 20 of them were planning to pursue an IP licensing strategy for valorisation.
Strong results were also achieved for the other key activities of ACTPHAST4R covering:
General awareness-building of photonics innovation opportunities within the European researcher community with an estimated 400.000 readers of the press releases and over 25.000 viewers of the ACTPHAST4R website, social media channels and promotional videos, while over 10.000 researchers were reached through a total of 169 targeted outreach campaigns organised by the partners generating 114 high-quality leads from researchers across 22 different European member states.
Technology scouting and business coaching supports provided to over 50 researchers in advance of the evaluation and granting of deep innovation support projects, with 12 selected researchers receiving additional business coaching support in the form of investment-readiness coaching and investor matchmaking via the newly developed initiative of the ACTPHAST4R Launchpad programme with 5 of these researchers going on to pitch their breakthrough concepts in front of top venture capitalists and corporate investors at the flagship European Photonics Venture Forum (EPVF).
Dissemination of the best practices of the ACTPHAST4R innovation support model with the European regions and close alignment of the innovation support activities of ACTPHAST4R with those of the wider European photonics innovation ecosystem. This was seen in particular through an alignment of the early TRL development activities of ACTPHAST4R with the innovation support activities of the pan-European Digital Innovation Hub in Photonics – PhotonHub Europe – at TRL3-8, which has culminated in the ACTPHAST4R Launchpad programme being incorporated as an important integral part of a new Horizon Europe project proposal for a Photonics Innovation Factory for Europe.

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