About

How do we achieve Excellent Science in a Digital Age?

The activities carried out by the European Commission in the field of Excellence in Science, are inherently forward-looking, building skills in the long term, focusing on the next generation of science, technology, researchers and innovators and providing support for emerging talent.

Through the support for Future and Emerging Technologies (FET), we encourage multidisciplinary and collaborative research and innovation, and invest in ground-breaking research that will address the future challenges of Europe. The Flagship initiatives Graphene and Human Brain Project, and the deployment of High-Performance Computing, confirm the objective to gain world leadership in these scientific sectors and to promote European industrial innovation.

Excellent science not only implies excellent research but also excellent research e-infrastructures to collectively drive this research by offering an essential tool to ensure data exchange, storage and processing, as well as interoperability of data across disciplines and national boundaries to broaden the scientific reach of individual data sets.

By supporting Open Science, we foster the link between research and society with significant benefits for citizens, businesses and scientists, such as job creation, improvement of research, productivity and creativity. We are doing this through policy initiatives in concert with practical support under FP7 and Horizon 2020 through projects like OpenAire and the open access to research data pilot, which has had excellent uptake in its first year of operation.

What more do we want to achieve?

A healthy Digital Single Market needs excellent research delivering the technologies and innovations into the market using excellent e-infrastructures, sharing of data and results.

We aim to ensure that researchers can collaborate wherever they are and that their results and data are open, accessible and available for others to use and reuse. This maximises the benefits of public funding and the uptake and use of its results.

How can you contribute?

The European scientific community has a strong role to play in determining the avenues of research.

We would be happy to hear about what you expect from the European research in the field of Excellent Science; what your experiences are; what problems you have encountered, and what your ideas are on FET, FET Flagships, Open Science and e-Infrastructures.

Share your experiences, present your innovative ideas, upload relevant documentation, engage with other researchers and with us, and help us design the future European policies and work programmes.