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TRIESTE, Italy, Dec. 10, 2003 — Trieste, the place some have called the Austrian city with an Italian address, has become the temporary home for more than 1,000 nanophiles this week.
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The city welcomed participants of the four-day EuroNanoForum, in the best way it knew how: by bringing in the bora. That’s the infamous wind that would put Chicago to shame. It blows very hard — the record stands at 144 miles an hour. It’s so powerful, that the city used to keep ropes on the streets so that people could hold on to them whenever the bora came to visit.
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Not the usual suspects
It’s estimated there have been more than 200 small tech conferences over the past 12 months. So why did the European Union organize yet another? The short answer: To get all the key people together.
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While other conferences have tended to focus on one specific area, like business or science, EuroNanoForum is trying to be as interdisciplinary as possible, bringing in education specialists, Nobel Prize winners, venture capitalists, sociologists and representatives from industry.
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“With this conference, we tried to create a framework that would include all the pillars,” said Renzo Tomellini, who organized the event. “Because if one pillar is missing, the other ones will be jeopardized.”
Speakers include small tech heavy hitters like fullerene co-discoverer Sir Harry W. Kroto, nanotech advocate and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and U.S. nano leader Mike Roco, but also people you wouldn’t necessarily expect, like Vincent Bayot, of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, who is going to talk about how higher education should respond to the growing need for nanotechnology specialists, and Orlando Arango, from the European Investment Bank, who is going to share his ideas on resolving the disconnect that sometimes exists between small tech entrepreneurs and financial operators.
Europe looks east
Better communication is one of the recurring themes of the conference, partly because it’s one of the toughest challenges facing Europe’s small tech community. It’s difficult enough to maintain effective communication when there are 15 member countries, speaking about 10 different languages — not to mention the cultural differences.
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That’s going to become even tougher when 10 new countries from Central and Eastern Europe join the club in the spring of 2004, turning the European Union into a 25-country economic bloc with the potential to become a powerhouse.
In this sense, the Trieste location has been aptly chosen, as a symbolic juncture between East and West. It’s on the border with Slovenia, one of the 10 countries scheduled to become part of the European Union in a few months. After World War II, both Italy and Yugoslavia claimed it. It was a United Nations protectorate for a time before finally becoming part of Italy in 1954. It remains an Italian city, where you can count on good tiramisu and a very strong espresso, but it has kept a certain Central European flair.
Acceding countries are already building closer ties with European Union members in small tech research and development. Of the almost 12,000 proposals received in the first round of the Sixth Framework Programme, the funding cycle that runs from 2002 to 2006, 40 percent included participants from candidate countries. According to the European Commission, the highest participation rate was in the nanotechnology and information society categories, both very small tech intensive.
The more the merrier
Many of the countries looking to join the European Union have sent delegates to Trieste. There are contingents from the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Poland and even Turkey. Most participants are from Western Europe, with a smattering of non-Europeans, mainly from North America and Asia. Not to be overly Eurocentric, forum organizers have invited small tech researchers from South Africa and Latin America to participate in a meet-and-greet lunch on Wednesday. Under the Sixth Framework Programme, researchers from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Russia, countries in the former Soviet Union and Western Balkan countries are all eligible for EU funding.
Piquing the interest of the young
You’ll see a lot of young faces at EuroNanoForum. Participation fees have been waived for students in an effort to generate career interest in the field. European leaders are keenly aware that the region is not producing the number of scientists it will need in the future.
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Giorgio Prosperi, a local young man, has a master’s degree in chemistry and is checking out EuroNanoForum out of curiosity.
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“I’m thinking of signing up for a nanotechnology Ph.D. degree that was just launched at a university near here,” he said over lunch. “I haven’t decided, but I’m thinking about it.”