Programme - Day 1

Green and digital transition of Europe through innovation

Speakers: Jean-Eric Paquet, Ville Niinisto, Andrea Barber, Constantijn Van Oranje-Nassau, Sylvia Schwaag-Serger, Belen Linares

The session will demonstrate political will to place innovation at the heart of accelerating the green and digital transitions through human-centred and citizen-led innovation. It will call for a stronger and deeper cooperation between the European Commission and the Member States, which will be the key to achieving twin transitions through innovative solutions, new initiatives and bottom-up approaches.

Europe is already leading innovation through its research and scientific excellence, but it needs further actions and steps forward in order to achieve breakthrough market-driven innovations that will ultimately contribute to a greener and more digital Europe, and foster growth, create jobs, boost our competiveness, and make us global leaders in science, innovation and technology.

Leveraging Innovation from across Europe

Speakers: Signe Ratso, Jernej Salecl, Arantxa Tapia, Andrea Basilova, Kristina Sermuksnyte-Alesiuniene

The session will demonstrate the political will to place innovation as one of the most important priorities at the European level. It will showcase examples of Member States, regional and remote innovators, whose success stories are an inspiration for all stakeholders.

Bringing ideas to life rapidly and ensuring access to markets ensures that cross-border and cross-sectoral exchanges of talents became a key success. Innovation has become more collaborative, interdisciplinary and disruptive than ever before and must be continued.

Place-based innovation policies build an entrepreneurial ecosystem with context-specific policy objectives in mind and have been proven successful, especially in the smaller, rural and peripheral cities that do not have an established innovation hub. Given its bottom-up approach, place-based policies can better address the economic development needs of such communities.

Growing and mobilising all talents

Speakers: Manuel Heitor, Bindi Karia, Andreea Baciu, Rebecca Saive, Dora Palfi

The session will demonstrate the importance of talent mobility, nurture and setting the example of good practices in entrepreneurial mind-sets in higher education. Considering the highly competitive nature of today’s global marketplace, the demands for internationally mobile talent, students and workforces have never been greater. Better labour mobility increases growth opportunities and jobs by nurturing better allocation of resources within the Union and by attracting and retaining talented individuals. As talent symbolises the foundations of the European innovation ecosystem, its academic institutions are its bedrock.

The questions remain: do we have an insight into the skills currently in our talent pool, what are the current skill gaps and how do we plan to close them? This session will showcase what Europe offers its talented people to ensure they stay in Europe, but also how it attracts talent from abroad.

Innovation Ecosystems

Speakers: Anna Panagopoulou, Peter Vesterbacka, Anita Krohn Traaseth, Antonija Mrsic Radas

This session will focus on the strong innovation ecosystems in Europe, which are not always well connected due to their many obstacles to making it substantially efficient, coherent, and having the same vision and mission for the whole continent. There is also a gap between the various strengths of national innovators, with the weaker stakeholders not having access to a large part of the European ecosystem’s resources.

The importance of an innovation policy at European level will be discussed as the way forward to achieve everyone moving in the same direction. No one can be left behind if we want to be global innovation leader.

Scaling-up through smart investments

Speakers: Cedric O, Jean-David Malo, Stavriana Kofteros, Veronika Oudova, Benedikt Kronberger,

The session will focus on high-growth start-ups that are broadly recognised as key sources of employment, productivity and economic growth. While the long-term impact of the COVID-19 crisis on start-ups remains to be seen, many now face greater constraints than before; continued policy support for start-ups therefore remains vital.

The session aims to address synergies between EU funds and national/regional funds, explore the potential of new forms of funding like financial instruments, public-private financing, find new ideas to facilitate scale-ups and offer a glimpse of the lessons learned from the current scaled-up initiatives in Europe. Even more important is offering the opportunity for promising start-ups to scale-up quickly. An important challenge for these businesses is the availability of external finance. Nearly 1 in 3 start-ups in Europe state that finding finance is a major obstacle to the success of their business.

ERA for HERA: How can Europe improve its research preparedness and response capabilities?

Speakers: Cristian-Silviu Bușoi, Irene Norstedt, Albert Osterhaus, Claire Skentelbery, Momir Radulović

The COVID-19 pandemic has painfully confirmed that the world has been under-prepared for large outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases. The EU is responding to, and learning from, the COVID-19 crisis, with new research and health policy initiatives brought forward by the European Commission on better preparedness for future health threats.

This session brings together policy-makers, academia, industry and the European Commission to discuss the challenges of building a coherent European Research Area (ERA), enabling Member States and the Commission to rapidly and jointly support R&I for pandemic preparedness and response, including in the context of the new Health Emergency Response Authority (HERA). The session will discuss how research and the development of medical countermeasures can be coordinated in preparation for a pandemic or other health threat. The audience will also learn how European collaboration in these efforts can be reinforced to increase their overall impact.

How can R&I help to leave no one behind in the post-COVID-19 recovery?

Speakers: Signe Ratso, Marit Sijbrandij, Elina Kilpi-Jakonen, Margarida Marques, Andrea Filippetti, Hans Kluge

This 45-minute interactive session will engage participants in an exchange with 5 high-level panellists on how research and innovation is responding to some of the most urgent health, social and economic challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The session will start with the geopolitical dimension of the policy debate on the pandemic and then showcase the activities of 2 EU projects. The first is devoted to enhancing the mental health and wellbeing of school children and older adults in times of COVID. The second one is on how to overcome and revert the inequalities exacerbated by COVID. The focus will then be on how one Member State has decentralised the pandemic management.

The session will conclude by offering practical implications of the recovery plan on the social recovery of the EU, its increased preparedness and the resilience of its populations.

Scientific breakthroughs as opportunities to address societal emergencies

Speakers: Philip Campbell, Nuria Montserrat, Gabriella Conti, László Lovász

Over 250 ERC projects contributed to understanding, predicting and containing the COVID-19 pandemic. They were initiated prior to the emergence of the crisis and addressed COVID-19-related research, making remarkable and unexpected contributions. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the central role that frontier research and scientific breakthroughs have played in finding workable solutions, at an unprecedented pace, to tackle the multiple problems the crisis has generated.

In this context, the session will bring forward three top-level scientists, whose work has generated key advances and tools to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. They will share their reflections about the role of frontier research and long-term financial support for early pioneers to generate disruptive innovation, to build more resilient societies and to address societal emergencies. Their combined experience will bring insights from three frontier research fronts: human biology, data science and the economy.

The added value of Open Science in times of pandemic and beyond – lessons learned and way forward

Speakers: Jean-Eric Paquet, Niklas Blomberg, Marion Koopmans, Robert F. Terry

The session aims to illustrate the added value of Open Science practices in the pandemic and how the lessons learnt may assist their full uptake in the context of the renewed European Research Area. The session will also discuss the European COVID-19 Data Platform as a breakthrough example of open data sharing and its use for rapid response for both research and policy needs.

Fast and flexible – repurposed production

Speakers: Kristin Schreiber, Nathalie Moll, Thomas Bauernhansl, Oscar Lazaro

COVID-19 has undoubtedly disrupted our world but has also caused significant shocks and strains on European manufacturing industries and supply chains. Over the course of a decade, companies can expect supply chain disruptions to erase 6 months’ worth of profits, or more.

This session brings together policy-makers, industry and innovators to discuss the challenges of repurposing manufacturing to achieve faster and more resilient production in Europe while learning from the COVID-19 experience, which required repurposing manufacturing supply chains in just 48 hours.The audience will also learn from the challenges RTOs and academia face in scaling up their innovations in an industrial environment to build more resilient and flexible supply chains in a post-COVID-19 world.