About TransFICS

TransFICS is a grouping of industry, public administrations, venture capital and research organisations tackling major Societal Challenges through the use of advanced ICT. TransFICS is a partnership involving the strongest players in Europe, forming a complete innovation chain in 6 European Regions. Each TransFICS Centre combines:

• Regional Government who confront Societal Challenges by providing services to users.
• Companies who provide products and services into the markets created around the Societal Challenges.
• Enterprise agencies, VCs, and angels who facilitate the introduction of products by supporting new enterprises.
• Universities and Research Institutes who bring research and a supply of trained people to create a flow of new product ideas into the innovation pipeline.

The economic and cultural diversity across the Centres provides a means of identifying common products and how to localise these to support local markets. TransFICS is poised to have massive impact on the regional economies it is rooted in and so provide a blueprint for success in other regions. TransFICS comprises the following Centres:

• Edinburgh/Scotland: Led by Edinburgh University, with access to the biggest and highest quality pool of Informatics and Computer Science researchers in the UK, in partnership with Scottish Enterprise (the region’s Enterprise, Innovation and Investment agency), Scotland IS (representing over 200 SMEs), West Lothian and Edinburgh Councils (local government pioneering new approaches to city planning and tele-healthcare) and LINC Scotland (the national association for the business angel community in Scotland, widely recognised as one of the most developed in the EU).
• Aachen-Bonn-Cologne region: Led by the Fraunhofer Institute, the leading industry-oriented ICT research organisation in Germany, and by RWTH Aachen University, ranked first-in Germany in Computer Science and Information Technology. This is one of the most densely concentrated educational and innovation regions in central Europe with partners such as the REGINA informatics industry initiative representing numerous spin-offs and research organizations of large international ICT players (Ericsson, Ford, Microsoft, Philips, and others), and representatives of leading industries in engineering, insurance, media, and energy.
• Barcelona/Catalonia: Led by IT services provider Atos Origin, one of the top five European companies in the ICT sector, the Barcelona node includes leading business school ESADE, (best European MBA 2008, the Wall Street Journal), the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, (with highest citable output in the fields of Computer Science and IT in Spain), Barcelona Super Computing Centre, (leading research centre in advanced computing paradigms), Barcelona City Council, technology centres (i2Cat, Bdigital) and the Generalitat (the Catalan regional government). The spectrum is further extended through the partners’ strong links to local investment funds, such as BarcelonaEmpren, other academic institutions (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) and local SMEs.
• Switzerland: Led by the Idiap Research Institute, coordinator of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) on Interactive Multimodal Information Management and affiliated to EPFL which has the highest ranked school of engineering in Europe, the Swiss node will build on its strong local industry stimulated by the pool of local talent. Other partners include IMD (the leading global business school in the world), SwissMedia (an industry association of over 200 SMEs) and VentureKick (seed capital for start-up projects of Swiss universities).
• Lombardy: Led by CESTEC (the innovation agency of Regione Lombardia) with partners including Bocconi University, considered the best Italian business school and one of the most important in Europe., Politecnico di Milano, consistently ranked as the best technical school in Italy and among the top 15 in Europe, CEFRIEL (the innovation and technology transfer institute), the Milan Chamber of Commerce, Assolombarda Giovani Industriali, the Italian National Agency for Innovation and Numonyx.
• Estonia: Led by ELIKO, the national centre for competence in electronics, information and communications technology, with partners including Tallinn University of Technology and the University of Tartu) recognised centres of excellence in ICT research, STACC, the public-private network for knowledge transfer and industrially driven R&D, Webmedia, the fastest growing private software house in the region reaching well over 300 employees across five countries, State Information Systems, the strategic planning and hosting system for government and citizens e-solutions, and the government funding agency, the Archimedes Foundation.
• TransFICS has the relevant core capabilities (governmental, operational, business, financial, entrepreneurial, educational and technical) to tackle the challenges that confront European Society over the coming century.