For many technology companies, the rate of innovation is just as important as innovation itself. Being able to stay ahead of the market and quickly develop products from prototypes can be key. But accessing the latest research and getting the know-how to develop cutting-edge solutions can be difficult and expensive, especially for smaller companies without their own research and development wings.
That is why collaborating with European Union-funded research projects has been so vital, says Raffaella Geometrante, the CEO of Italian spin-off Kyma, which develops and produces advanced high-tech permanent magnets devices for accelerator facilities and laboratories.
Her company has through the I.FAST project developed two new technological solutions with other research partners such as the UK’s Diamond Light Source and CERN.
“We work with I.FAST to speed up the rate of innovation, acting as co-innovators,” said Geometrante. “If industry is involved in the beginning stages, it can speed up the process.” Kyma’s primary customers are synchrotron, universities, research labs and specialised innovation companies, so working on EU projects lets the company stay abreast of their needs in an affordable way.
“Research is expensive. Some companies can have big R&D labs, but if you are small you have to find a way to tap into this. Having this interaction with labs helps us stay in touch with [our potential clients’] needs – it helps us know where to go with a new technology,” she added.
The I.FAST project, which kicked off in 2021 and will end later this year, was funded under the EU’s ‘innovation pilots’ scheme with one of its main goals being to better connect Europe’s accelerator research community with industrial partners. The project aims to enhance innovation in the particle accelerator community and has 18 companies participating either as beneficiaries or associated partners.
Through the project, several events bridging research and industry have been held, and an academia-industry exchange programme was set up to provide staff exchanges between companies and research labs. The project also established the Accelerator Science and Technology Industry Permanent Forum (AIPF) to better align the priorities of research institutions and industry over the long term, which Geometrante currently co-chairs.
This connection to industry has provided several opportunities for both the industry partners involved in the project, and the scientists and engineers working on the research aspects.
One company that has benefitted from involvement in I.FAST is Dutch precision manufacturing company VDL ETG Precision, which contributed to work on the mechanical design and ultra-precise manufacturing of linear accelerator structures and electron guns, with positive results.
“A key achievement was refining the high-end serial production of extremely precise components, particularly accelerator cells,” said Martien Jansen, manufacturing engineer at VDL ETG Precision. “This was accomplished by sharpening internal processes and applying our unique Ultra Precision Technology (UPT).”
This work demonstrates the shared value that companies and researchers can get when brought together through European projects.
“These efforts not only deepened our technical expertise but also reinforced our position in high-end, industrialised ultra-precision machining. By participating in the I.FAST programme we further developed our technical competencies to stay at the forefront of innovation,” Jansen said.
Rösler Italiana, a subsidiary of the surface finishing solutions group Rösler, was also involved in I.FAST as an industrial partner. They helped to address surface finishing of components produced by metal additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing.
“Working on these objects with specific requirements far from our usual application field was an opportunity to push forward the limit of mass finishing processes, exploring new solutions,” said Matteo Pozzi, an R&D engineer at Rösler Italiana.
The project also allowed the company to stay ahead of the curve and anticipate technological trends and solutions that “address the future needs of both research and industry”, said Pozzi.
He added that the benefits went both ways, with both the researchers and company gaining knowledge. “Working side by side with scientific institutions and industrial partners allows us to combine academic excellence with practical know-how, generating tangible progress that can be transferred into real applications.”
Geometrante echoed this, saying that research and industry were two sides of the same coin. “Research is long-term, industry considers time to market. Where they can help each other is industry can help speed up research, and research can help enable industry with new technologies.”
Aside from developing new technical competencies, the three companies highlighted other benefits of being involved in I.FAST, such as the chance to network with experts and other industry partners, and boosting the company’s reputation and portfolio to attract new clients.
Pozzi also spoke about the project being a way for the company to do more for science as well as the general population. “R&D projects are not only a driver of competitiveness for our company, but also a means to contribute to the advancement of the scientific community and the society,” he said.
Rösler Italiana has also benefited from the academia-industry exchange programme and is hosting a PhD candidate from Politecnico di Milano, supporting his research.
A talk organised by APS Forum on International Physics titled Accelerating Innovation: Industry & Research Creating Value Together, featuring Raffaella Geometrante, CEO of Kyma. Find out more here.
EU projects as an innovation source
The EU has put a greater emphasis on connecting research with industry in recent years. According to a mid-way point evaluation of Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research and innovation funding programme, around 16,220 companies have been supported through grants between 2021 to 2024. In this time, there were 124 validated intellectual property submissions, which includes patent applications, trademarks and utility designs, although this figure could be underestimated, the report states, and around 3,703 innovative products, processes or methods produced and reported by the projects.
It shows the growing importance that EU projects are playing in bridging academia and industry, although challenges do remain.
One hurdle to overcome is the science community’s mindset of producing novel components or parts to tackle individual problems, rather than looking at ways to use more general-purpose solutions that only require minor tweaks.
“It’s the standardisation issue,” Geometrante said. Her point is that if more components and parts were standardised, companies would benefit by being able to sell through serial production or, in rarer instances, mass production. This would provide companies with a steady revenue stream and reduce production costs, while giving researchers faster access to components at a lower price.
“Not everything has to be standardised, but some things should be,” Geometrante said.
“Each lab has its own unique parts, but some of the bricks that build these technologies can be standardised. We truly believe this would be good for labs and companies. If you have at least a serial production, you can scale up – having constant production is a dream of many companies working in this field,” she said.
Having companies involved in research projects at an early stage, as in the case of I.FAST, increases the likelihood of standardisation, she added.
The AIPF is actively working on this challenge. “We’ve gained a lot of experience with I.FAST and we have to keep going in this direction,” Geometrante said. “As a permanent forum we’d be happy to think about how to implement standardisation and how we could think about components that could work across different facilities.”
Other challenges of being involved in large-scale R&D projects are the complexity and the time investment, Jansen said. “The complexity of project structures, cost-sharing, and scope division between partners can be a barrier, especially for companies unfamiliar with this way of working. It requires a strategic mindset and long-term commitment to optimally benefit from these cooperations,” he said.
Simplification is one of the key areas that EU officials are hoping to improve on as they develop the next research funding programme.
Another question often posed by companies considering involvement in EU projects is what immediate benefit they will get, but Pozzi said the answer to this is more nuanced.
“We believe that progress is not made only of immediate successes, but also of the experiences gained from unexpected or less-than-satisfactory results,” he said.
“In the context of research and innovation, the true value lies not only in achieving the final goal, but also in the shared journey, the exchange of ideas, and the collective growth that enriches both the scientific and industrial communities.”