Graphene Flagship gets more industrial interest

More than 700 organisations of various shape, size and areas of interest combined to make 218 proposals of research projects. Of these, 66 organisations have been accepted as new partners, taking the number involved in the Flagship to more than 140. And 30% of these are companies. Suitable quotes were issued. Neelie Kroes, seemingly Europe's technology dynamo, said: "The more we can unlock the potential of graphene, the better!" Meanwhile, Nobel Prize winner Sir Konstantin Novoselov said: "It is encouraging to see strong groups with expertise outside of the usual graphene science joining the Graphene Flagship." Within that last quote is an encouraging phrase - 'strong groups with expertise outside of the usual graphene science'. Too often, research projects involve the 'usual suspects'. You could argue they are some kind of academic job creation process and many believe the results never quite seem to make it into the commercial domain. Although the Graphene Flagship has been set up to address the long term, it would be encouraging to see some early successes.