Brussels, 25/01/2013 (Agence Europe) - It is not yet official, but we have learned that the European Commission will be announcing on Monday 28 January that two projects - one Swiss and one Swedish - have won the FET Flagships competition. The first sifting of applications was done in May 2011 to decide on projects that will get €1 billion in funding.
The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland and the Chalmers Polytechnic, in Sweden, have won the prize. The Swiss project, the Human Brain Project, seeks artificially to simulate the functioning of the human brain. It will be carried out in partnership with 13 European research institutes. The second prize-winner, Graphene, is about a new material discovered in 2004 which, it is hoped, will be useful for research and industry in the field of electronics, physics,energy and telecoms, although its huge production costs are a major obstacle to rapid commercialisation of products made from it. (JK/transl.fl)