Graphene Flagship doubles in size

The €1 billion (£798 million) Graphene Flagship project has nearly doubled the size of its network, announcing 66 new partner organisations last week. This takes the total number – which includes companies, universities and research institutions – to more than 140. About a third of the new partners are companies, increasing the proportion of industry-based partners in the consortium, which was initially around 20%. 23 countries in total are now represented.

The Graphene Flagship was set up last year after winning a €1 billion investment from the European commission’s future and emerging technologies competition. It aims to take graphene ‘from the lab to the factory floor’ over the next 10 years. Initially the project received €21.6 million per year, which will steadily increase as the scope of the project increases and the network grows. This latest batch of new partner organisations is the result of a €9 million ‘ramp up’ funding call that attracted hundreds of proposals. The winners were picked by an international panel of leading academics.

Graphene Flagship director Jari Kinaret from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, said in a statement that the response to the funding call had been ‘overwhelming’ and the competition ‘extremely tough’. ‘I am impressed by the high quality of the proposals we received and looking forward to working with all the new partners,’ he added.