Dear Mr Galateri di Genola, dear Dr Metta, Ministers, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
 
It is great to be here today to celebrate the 2Oth anniversary of the founding of this great institution.
We have heard much about the success of the Institute and some great examples of the many advances being made here.
 
As you know, the European Research Council was created in 2007 in order to support excellent scientists from anywhere in the world, of any age and from any field of research - including the social sciences and humanities. There are no predetermined targets or priorities. Our evaluation is focussed primarily on the ground-breaking nature, ambition, and feasibility of the research project. We do not ask that the projects we fund should lead to immediate application.
 
The Institute here follows a different philosophy. It is oriented to applications and technology in particular domains, specifically: Computational Science; Life Technologies (LifeTech); Nanomaterials; and Robotics, alongside an array of interdomain initiatives.
So you might think that the ERC would have little interest in funding IIT researchers and that IIT researchers would have little interest in applying for funding from the ERC.
 
But nothing could be further from the truth!
Researchers based at the Institute have received over 50 ERC grants making the Institute one of the most successful in Italy.
And this proves the strong links between curiosity-driven research and the eventual development of new technologies and applications.
In the end all technologies harness natural phenomena. We can’t just invent anything we like. That’s for science fiction.
 
So it is science and building up our understanding of the world - be it the physical world, the living world or the human world - that allows us to create new technologies. What gives science its transformative impact is that by understanding the world we can change the world.
The history of innovation shows that freedom for researchers to pursue their creative ideas, without strings attached, has been vital for countless discoveries, many of which have led to breakthrough technologies with enormous benefits for society and that have boosted the economy. For example, the work by Charles Kuen Kao, Willard S Boyle and George E Smith, the “fathers of fibre optics and digital imaging” and winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics, laid the foundation for today’s networked society. Without their research on the physical properties of glass and on semiconductor integrated circuits, the trillion-dollar communications industry that has contributed to the last decades’ economic growth may never have come about.
 
Now don’t get me wrong. By emphasising the benefits of curiosity driven research I do not at all mean to diminish the difficulties of turning knowledge into technologies and applications.
 
The great mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said in 1925: “…it is a great mistake to think that the bare scientific idea is the required invention, so that it has only to be picked up and used. An intense period of imaginative design lies between. One element in the new method is just the discovery of how to set about bridging the gap between the scientific ideas, and the ultimate product. It is a process of disciplined attack upon one difficulty after another.”
 
The pandemic has given us a spectacular example of the effectiveness of investing in frontier research with the development of the mRNA vaccines.
Ugur Sahin, Özlem Türeci and their team developed the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine within months of the outbreak. They had been working on the possible use of mRNA technology for individualised cancer vaccines. But they were very quickly able to shift their research to developing a vaccine for COVID-19. Sahin received support from many sources, including an ERC grant as well as funding and loans from other EU programmes.
 
However, the key fact is that Sahin’s work was based on five decades of previous mRNA research. The idea of using mRNA for therapeutic purposes was first proposed in the early 90s. So having the idea was only the beginning of a long and often difficult process with many false dawns along the way. This is why a lot of credit should go to Katalin Karikó. Despite receiving very little funding or recognition she carried on working over many years to develop mechanisms for reducing the immune response to mRNA.
 
So my point is that we need both curiosity driven and applied research. And that both can be of the highest quality. Indeed, in 2005, just before the creation of the ERC, an expert group concluded that: “classical distinctions between ‘basic’ and ‘applied’ research have lost much of their relevance at a time when emerging areas of science and technology often embrace substantial elements of both.”
And that is why at the ERC we describe the research that we fund as “frontier research”. And that is why our evaluation panels can readily recognise the excellence of the research which is carried out here at the Institute.
 
So while the ERC funds research without expecting any immediate technological benefit, the ERC philosophy is certainly not against the development of new technologies and applications! Frontier research often generates radically new ideas that drive innovation and business inventiveness and tackle societal challenges.
 
That is one of the reasons why the ERC introduced its Proof of Concept Grants back in 2011. ERC PoC Grants aim at facilitating exploration of the commercial and social innovation potential of ERC funded research and are therefore available only to Principal Investigators whose proposals draw substantially on their ERC funded research.
 
The objective is to enable ERC-funded ideas to progress on the path from ground-breaking research towards innovation.
Proof of Concept Grants support activities such as: testing, experimenting, demonstrating and validating the idea; establishing viability, technical issues and overall direction; clarifying IPR protection or knowledge transfer strategy; and involving industrial partners, societal or cultural organisations, or policymakers and other potential stakeholders.
 
So it is no surprise that ERC grantees based here at the Institute have received 17 Proof of Concept Grants.
ERC-funded researchers have also created many start-ups and have transferred the results of their research to existing companies.
Their scientific publications, some of them important for the evolution of new scientific areas, are also among the most highly cited in patent applications. Over 44% of ERC-funded projects have generated research that was subsequently cited by patent applications, filed by firms and institutions all over the world.
 
The European Commission made two important announcements on 20 June on economic security and the EU budget. On economic security the announcement mentions the need to restrict exports of “key enabling technologies with military applications (e.g. in the areas of Quantum [computing], Advanced Semiconductors, Artificial Intelligence)”. It also suggests the need to foster “the research and industrial base in strategic areas such as advanced semi-conductors, quantum computing, biotechnology, net-zero industries, clean energy or critical raw materials”.
For the budget the Commission have asked for €10bn for a Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) “to promote the EU's long-term competitiveness on critical technologies, in the fields of digital and deep tech, clean tech and biotech”. This funding will go to InvestEU, the Innovation Fund, the European Innovation Council (EIC) and the European Defence Fund.
 
Yet all of these named areas are exactly areas where frontier research of the kind funded by the ERC and carried out here at the Institute is still necessary. It is not the case that technologies like quantum computing and communication, advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence and biotechnology are mature and just need to be deployed at scale.
 
For example, over the course of Horizon 2020 ERC funded 757 projects, worth €1466 million in these areas.
We need to ensure then that our leaders and decision makers understand the close connection between basic and applied research.
The EU is engaged in a multilevel competition where we cannot afford to fall behind in the cutting edge science that these technologies rest on. Stripping EU research funds to support industrial policy is therefore very short sighted. And it is very important that all of us engaged in frontier research make this point known as the Commission now gears up to develop its next long term budget for the EU and the next EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.
 
Furthermore, we need our leaders and citizens to understand that the channels by which frontier research feeds into the economy (or makes an “impact”) are many and diverse. It is not about X number of patents or Y number of spin-off companies. It is not even just about the occasional breakthrough discovery.
 
Basic research increases the stock of useful knowledge, both the kind which is written down (e.g. scientific publications) and the kind that people carry around in their heads (e.g. skills, knowhow and experience). It trains skilled graduates and researchers in solving complex problems, produces new scientific instruments and methodologies, creates international peer networks for transmitting the latest knowledge and can even raise new questions about societal values and choices. This is the foundation upon which we can build our future.
 
And finally, if we do try to measure the benefits of research we should avoid a narrowly defined utilitarianism. One key consideration is that people go into research for the intellectual challenge. They have a sense of curiosity about the world. Their ambition is to work with leaders in their fields, or even to create a new field of their own. This is another reason why defending scientific freedom is not naïve. It is essential to ensure that research remains an attractive career for our brightest and most ambitious young people. If we don’t get this right then we will never be able to meet our other goals!