Overview
COOPERATEUS is a European Project within the Framework Programme 7 (Research / Aeronautics and Air Transport) aiming at establishing an initial framework, data base and network, in order to facilitate and enhance the cooperation in R&T activities between the two largest world players in aeronautics, i.e. the USA and Europe.
It will introduce a more structured dialogue to identify the similarities in the respective research agendas / road maps. It will be used to create a better mutual understanding, thus permitting to build up ad-hoc EU-US R&T cooperation areas of mutual benefit propose win-win R&T roadmaps / cooperations (ex: volcanic ashes). Have a mutual understanding of administrative mechanisms: clarify the principles governing such EU-US R&T cooperation, respective funding mechanisms, IPRs, etc. and the main barriers to that cooperation and suggest ways to overcome all the problems.
COOPERATEUS project will indicate the areas where the cooperation topics are mutually favored assuring a good reciprocity between the parties. More over, COOPERATEUS is in the logic of the EU-US memorandum of cooperation (MoC) presently under preparation. It will not interfere with the various EU-US R&T cooperative activities already undertaken, but might nonetheless provide rules and reference that could be beneficial to all. Finally the project will provide common R&T road maps for cooperation to be introduced in future calls for proposals within Framework programmes of the European Commission and mechanisms in the US.
A structured dialogue to identify the similarities in the EU and US research agendas and their road maps.
Funding
Results
The project was divided into two phases:
- Phase one explored and identified potential aeronautics research cooperation topics. This resulted in a large range of collaboration opportunities, collected from the contacts created or emerging from the currently existing collaborations. It included up to 14 themes between academies and some EU and US industry partners explored several domains of cooperation potentialities at different maturity levels. On this basis the second phase was initiated by end of June 2011.
- Phase two aimed at consolidating of the collaboration opportunities and making analysis to provide the required deliverables. In order to achieve that a lot of both internal and external events were organised involving the scientific, research and industrial communities (external events in Washington DC, Nice, Orlando, Paris, Seville, Madrid, London and Brussels). Large enquiry questionnaire was sent around to capture the existing cooperation experiences. Dedicated Work shops were organised between potential partners to deepen the details of content and ways to proceed.
The internal meetings enabled analysing the findings with the following results:
- High level collaboration agreements between US agencies (especially NASA) and EU government institutes are effective mechanisms, with both partners agreeing to fund their own activities. However, significant problems of meeting US (and EU national) regulations and legislation still remain. It can involve Technological Readiness Levels (TRL’s) ranging from 1 to 5.
- University-to-University collaboration is fairly straightforward, providing agreements on IPR can be reached. Usually applied to 'basic research' in the TRL ranges 1 to 3.
- With research laboratories NASA Aeronautics top management clearly did not want to support a global CooperatEUS approach, willing to deal only with the E.C. On the other side bilateral agreements exist between National labs and NASA and are the preferred ways for the Laboratories, willing to protect their research subjects. Though, exceptions exist with subjects of very general public interest like psycho-acoustical effects of noise emissions.
- Industry-to-industry collaboration on technology development is far more difficult, involving higher TRL levels and hence more concern about application. Like before examples exist where this has been successfully accomplished in a 'supplier-integrator' situation bio fuels and REACH effects a
Strategy targets
4. The external dimension.