HPC stands for High Performance Computing
It's a super-computer which is capable of doing millions of calculations simultaneously,
such as it's used everyday for weather forecasting, in designing cars and potentially looking
at genetics modelling for personalised medicine
It was always our ambition to build on the EU Structural funding investment into HPC
to build on our expertise and our experience and the skills we've developed to be able
to lead a programme across Europe with other HPC centres that will deliver competencies
to SME's to enhance their competitiveness in the future.
HPCWales has been extremely successful in collaboration and networking
We've got members of our team who sit on International Steering Committees and on panels,
Industrial and Academic around the world
and we've actually attended the Super Computing and International Super Computing shows so
that we could raise our profile and develop a network and partners and our Marketing Department
has enhanced our profile enormously by producing good case studies.
EU Funding has enabled us to deliver new jobs, create new products and processes, to work with
businesses to support their innovation and to actually enhance the skills of the workforce.
But not just that, there are intangible benefits such as relationships and reputation that
will enhance the long term sustainability and the benefits to Wales.
Without EU funds we wouldn't be leading this Horizon 2020 bid
We wouldn't be part of a bid and there wouldn't be any HPC Wales.
Our experience with EU funding has been challenging but very rewarding
It has paid off
We hope that our experience and success encourages and inspires others to take up the opportunities
that are on offer through EU funds.
My name is Dr Ian Masters from Swansea University
and I lead the Low Carbon Research Institute Marine Consortium
which is an across Wales project involving all of the Welsh Unversities and our goal
is to look at how we extract energy from the seas, from waves and from tides
Working as a collaboration is an important part of what we do
When you're thinking about working in Europe, that takes a much longer time to put those
collaborations together
and it starts really by going to conferences and meetings and talking about what we do.
From that you can build a project team with people from across Europe which leads you
then into a successful, hopefully successful bid and then future project collaboration.
My role as a Collaborative Projects Officer is to represent our group in Consortia
We have recently been supported by the SCoRE Cymru scheme with two travel grants
which were very beneficial for us in order to meet more prospective partners in Europe and expand
our international network
MARIBE is a European project which sets out to understand the challenges that Europe is
faced in order to be able to contribute in the Blue Economy
The project will explore different business models which are tailored to meet the needs
of each of four different maritime basins
This is a very exciting time for us because we are able to promote Wales during this project
to our partners
and what we will try to do is to promote the area of Pembrokeshire as an area to be considered
to locate one of these large scale pilot initiative projects
One of the key things that EU Funding has allowed us to do is to build critical mass
and to build credibility
which has allowed us to compete with other research groups across Europe on equal terms
both in terms of the research and development we're doing but also our ability to compete
for future EU funds under Horizon 2020
And we're going to see a lot more of this Industry and a lot more of this energy
in the future, which is going to be a great benefit for Wales
My name is Martin McHugh and I work for Microsemi Corporation
We're based in South Wales, we employ about 100 people on this site, primarily in the
manufacture of small subsystems for implantable devices like pacemakers,
implantable cardio-defibrilators, small camera pills that you see and other small medical devices
We've been involved in six FP6 and 7 projects, all to do with medical devices, miniaturisation
and achieving that sort of whole portability.
This is a radio module that we developed under our first FP programme called Healthy Aims
This is the miniaturised version and both products are actually used in medical devices
such as pacemakers and implantable cardio-defibrilators
Framework 7 programmes have had a number of impacts on our business
It's allowed us to transition from what was an analogue wired business in terms of telecommunications
into a medical devices business
It's also allowing us now actually to explore where we want to be in 2020, which is probably
going to be in the area of harsh environment and high temperature electronics.
If we have an idea and we put it forward to a Framework 7 project application and it gets funded,
we know that the EU have subjected that application to a peer review of industry experts and that
we're probably heading in the right direction
There have been two benefits mainly for us.
The first one is in the access to the Research Institutes in Europe and all of the skills
and knowledge that they have
and the building of our own skill sets and processes here.
The second benefit has been in terms of the gearing of the R&D spend
A project that we had €4million total cost, our contribution to that is about €300,000
of which we'll get a grant of about €150,000
So basically for €150,000 of cost to Microsemi we're getting access to €4million of research
I'm Andrew Howell, I'm Managing Director of BCB International
We are a SME, a family company based in Cardiff, we design and develop innovative solutions
primarily for the Security, Defence and the Maritime Industry.
We found out about Horizon 2020 from a number of seminars we went to
There's substantial funding available from Brussels for innovations
We went to the Welsh Government and they able to assist us through the SCoRE Programme in
giving us funding which we could then undertake an outside consultant
to write a business plan with us for Horizon 2020 funding.
Under that we've identified two partners that we're working with, or going to work with,
one based in Hungary and the other in Portugal.
Both partners are SME's and with both parters we're looking to work on the success that we've already
developed our Nano UAV on.
So we'll take this as our platform and expand it to other areas.
At the moment our UAV has got sense and avoid which means that it won't crash
It's also got autonomous flight software which means that it's very easy and quick to fly
and based on this exisiting technology that we've have we're now looking under Horizon 2020
to expand into other roles and areas of using the UAVs.
This funding is very important to us in the future because it will take our company which
is at the moment a relatively low-tech company into a completely different market which would
be up-market high-tech company.
And that's really what 2020 funding will do for small companies and large companies.
Without the EU funding we wouldn't have proceeded with projects I think are too risky without
the funding and also we wouldn't have proceeded with multi-projects at the same time
My advice to other companies is to just go for it.