Project Description

The Convergent Science Network (CSN) will coordinate and facilitate the development and deployment of multidisciplinary methods, concepts and technologies to advance the understanding and engineering of biomimetic and hybrid biological and artificial systems.
The concrete outcome will be the establishment of an independent ’European Association for Biomimetic and Biohybrid Research’. This association will further advance and coordinate the field of biohybrid and biomimetic convergent sciences within the Future and Emerging Technology programmes. This goal will be achieved through a number of concrete actions during the 3 years. These actions include roadmapping events with accompanying policy documents, high-impact workshops and schools to achieve intense exchange among the leading groups in the field and provide training opportunities for junior researchers, the deployment of a web 2.0 CSN portal that will be a main point of access and dissemination, the production of a handbook of biomimetic and biohybrid systems, a number of brokerage and outreach events to address additional stakeholders. The driving motivation behind CSN is that the development of future real-world technologies will depend strongly on our fundamental understanding and harnessing of the principles underlying living systems. However, to achieve this goal some obstacles have to be addressed including: the development of a truly convergent perspective on biomimetic and biohybrid systems that translates into effective paradigms for research and development, the advancement of European curricula of postgraduate teaching, the creation of platforms of exchange among the active members of the research community and further stakeholders and the dissemination of concrete policy suggestions to pertinent policy makers. CSN will directly address these obstacles and facilitate and accelerate the development of this new field of research and development. 

Partners

Coordinator: Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Participants: The University of Sheffield, Universität Zürich, Università degli Studi di Padova