Invest in R&D for upturn

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© 2002 EE Times Europe

By Stephanie Gordon

At the third annual meeting of the Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA) programme, industry leaders called for more investment in R&D and wider research co-operation in Europe.

At the meeting in Amsterdam, Jaap Van Scheijen, director of ITC at the Dutch ministry of economic affairs, described the current industry undulations as a "fundamental restructuring", and called for countries and companies to invest in R&D in preparation for the upturn.

Van Scheijen suggested that, in Europe, 10% GDP investment in R&D would secure technology's future, but he warned that to achieve it, European countries would have to work together. He added that he hoped the symposium would be used for partnerships to be formed and new projects to be discussed.

The ITEA programme has more than 245 partners from 18 European countries. The partners work together to build middleware and prepare standards for embedded and distributed software. ITEA partners include companies, research institutes and universities.

Projects highlighted at this year's symposium included:

- Adaptive Content Delivery
- Adaptive networks and services
- Context aware environments
- Advanced platforms and technologies for communication services
- User centred intelligence beyond the graphical user interface
- Creating a validated architecture for the multimedia Internet chain of the future
- From concepts to application in system-family engineering
- Paving the way for cooperative development of Virtual and Augmented Reality applications
- Software development process for Real-Time Embedded Software Systems
- Creating a complete digital cinema chain for Europe
- Interactive broadband services for European users
- Embedded electronic architecture for the European automotive industry
- Evolution management and process fro real-time embedded software systems
- Opening up the potential of interactive digital TV
- Engineering of software diversity