Emergence of an European innovation system and its impact on Austria

The concept of a European Innovation System (EIS), defined as common effort of the EU as a whole and not merely as sum on national undertakings of the EU member states, has never been far below the surface for those seeking to create a united Europe. However, it needed a lot of years to emerge on the surface, still these days mor an - partly already operationalised - idea than an elaborated conceptual policy. In a brief historical perspective the emergence of the EIS wil be elaborated. At the time being, the 4th Framework Programme for European RTD (FP4) is running. It covers the period from 1994 until 1998 and encompasses an overall budget of approx. 15 billion ECU, which is considerably higher than the respective budgets in the late 1980s. However, the budget for FP4 and FP5 as well is still just around 4 % of the sum of all national public RTD-budgets of the 15 member states. Moreover, in terms of R&D expenditure, the EU is still lacking behind its main global competitors. While there is a slight but steady decreasing trend in those EU countries which already spend the largest proportion on R&D expenditure, most growth can be stated either in those countries starting from a relatively low base or the Nordic countries, while the Austrian value stagnates. The differences in the distribution of R&D expenditures by socio-economic objectives between the various national governments and the European Commission are remarkable. The objectives laid down in FP4 can be regarded as an additional value for the Austrian innovation system. Due to its specific nature, FP4 has some substantial advantages for the Austrian innovation system.First, Austria contributes roughly three per cent of the total FP4 budget, but has access to considerably more know-how. Second, the EU RTD programme is based on inter-institutional networking. This forces and facilitates the entry of industrial enterprises in research consortia and thus stimulates the co-operation between academic and enrepreneurial research efforts. Third, there are a lot of EU RTD efforts which focus directly on the active participation of SMEs, which form the overall industrial structure in Austria. The fourth advantage of the EU RTD programmes for Austria lies in its obvious and highly necessary concentration on high-tech sectors. In Austria the rate of export specialisation on goods with high R&D-input is twice as low as in the EU. First results of the Austrian participation in FP4 show some remarkable features. Out of 3972 submitted project proposals with Austrian participation, 1053 were funded by the EC. Especially successful were proposals with Austrian participants from the business sector (40 % of successful proposers), followed by participants from the universities (32 %) and non-university research institutions (16 %), both below their respective share in terms of application. Concerning the different technological programmes, Austria performed especially well in the non-nuclear energy programmes, in some of the environmental targeted research programmes, in information technologies and telematics as well as in transport targeted research.

ERAWATCH country reports 2011: Austria

The main objective of the ERAWATCH Annual Country Reports is to characterise and assess the performance of national research systems and related policies in a structured manner that is comparable across countries. EW Country Reports 2011 identify the structural challenges faced by national innovation systems. They further analyse and assess the ability of the policy mix in place to consistently and efficiently tackle these challenges. The annex of the reports gives an overview of the latest national policy efforts towards the enhancement of European Research Area and further assess their efficiency to achieve the targets. These reports were originally produced in November - December 2011, focusing on policy developments over the previous twelve months. The reports were produced by the ERAWATCH Network under contract to JRC-IPTS. The analytical framework and the structure of the reports have been developed by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the Joint Research Centre (JRC-IPTS) and Directorate General for Research and Innovation with contributions from ERAWATCH Network Asbl.JRC.J.2-Knowledge for Growt

RIO Country Report 2017: Austria

The R&I Observatory country report 2017 provides a brief analysis of the R&I system covering the economic context, main actors, funding trends & human resources, policies to address R&I challenges, and R&I in national and regional smart specialisation strategies. Data is from Eurostat, unless otherwise referenced and is correct as at January 2018. Data used from other international sources is also correct to that date. The report provides a state-of-play and analysis of the national level R&I system and its challenges, to support the European Semester.JRC.B.7-Knowledge for Finance, Innovation and Growt

Die österreichische Zulieferindustrie im Lichte des europäischen Integrationsprozesses. Eine empirische Untersuchung am Beispiel der Maschinen- und Stahlbau- sowie der Elektro- und Elektronikindustrie.

Series: Research Reports of the Institute for Economic Geography and GIScienc

Technologische und organisatorische Kompetenz österreichischer Zulieferbetriebe. Eine empirische Untersuchung am Beispiel der Maschinen- und Stahlbauindustrie sowie der Elektro- und Elektronikindustrie

Series: Discussion Papers of the Institute for Economic Geography and GIScienc

Overview of EU-Russia R&D and Innovation Cooperation: ERA.NET RUS Scenario Validation

A foresight exercise is one of the central elements of the EU FP7 funded ERA.Net RUS project. The foresight exercise prepares structural and thematic scenarios for R&D and innovation cooperation between EU Member States (MS), Associated Countries (AC) to FP7 and Russia. The term structural scenario refers to institutional solutions and instruments (e.g. funding programmes) for the cooperation, whereas the term thematic scenario refers to relevant thematic priorities for the cooperation. The foresight and the resulting scenarios shall provide a basis for a sustainable joint funding programme between EU MS/AC and Russia.JRC.J.2-Knowledge for Growt

PCSIM: A Parallel Simulation Environment for Neural Circuits Fully Integrated with Python

The Parallel Circuit SIMulator (PCSIM) is a software package for simulation of neural circuits. It is primarily designed for distributed simulation of large scale networks of spiking point neurons. Although its computational core is written in C++, PCSIM's primary interface is implemented in the Python programming language, which is a powerful programming environment and allows the user to easily integrate the neural circuit simulator with data analysis and visualization tools to manage the full neural modeling life cycle. The main focus of this paper is to describe PCSIM's full integration into Python and the benefits thereof. In particular we will investigate how the automatically generated bidirectional interface and PCSIM's object-oriented modular framework enable the user to adopt a hybrid modeling approach: using and extending PCSIM's functionality either employing pure Python or C++ and thus combining the advantages of both worlds. Furthermore, we describe several supplementary PCSIM packages written in pure Python and tailored towards setting up and analyzing neural simulations

Evaluation of the Arts-based Research Programme of the Austrian Science Fund (PEEK)

Gegenstand dieser Evaluierung ist das Programm für künstlerische Forschung (PEEK) des Wissenschaftsfonds (FWF). Mit der Einführung dieses Programms im Jahr 2009 hat der FWF auf die in der Novelle zum Hochschulgesetz 2002 postulierte Gleichstellung der Kunstuniversitäten mit anderen Universitäten reagiert, die mit einer entsprechenden Novelle im Forschungs- und Technologiegesetz 2007 verankert wurde. Als Äquivalent für "Wissenschaft" wurde für die Kunstuniversitäten der Arbeitsbereich "Entwicklung und Erschließung der Künste" übernommen. Mit der Aufnahme der "Entwicklung und Erschließung der Künste" in das Forschungs- und Technologiegesetz sollte auch die Aufwertung der Kunsthochschulen zu Kunstuniversitäten und deren Gleichstellung mit den anderen öffentlichen Universitäten signalisiert werden. Um die Möglichkeit zu gewährleisten, adäquate Forschungsansätze zu bieten, die dem Charakter und der Reichweite der Kunstuniversitäten entsprechen, wurde die kunstwissenschaftliche Forschung als ein vielversprechender Ansatz identifiziert

Compensating Inhomogeneities of Neuromorphic VLSI Devices Via Short-Term Synaptic Plasticity

Recent developments in neuromorphic hardware engineering make mixed-signal VLSI neural network models promising candidates for neuroscientific research tools and massively parallel computing devices, especially for tasks which exhaust the computing power of software simulations. Still, like all analog hardware systems, neuromorphic models suffer from a constricted configurability and production-related fluctuations of device characteristics. Since also future systems, involving ever-smaller structures, will inevitably exhibit such inhomogeneities on the unit level, self-regulation properties become a crucial requirement for their successful operation. By applying a cortically inspired self-adjusting network architecture, we show that the activity of generic spiking neural networks emulated on a neuromorphic hardware system can be kept within a biologically realistic firing regime and gain a remarkable robustness against transistor-level variations. As a first approach of this kind in engineering practice, the short-term synaptic depression and facilitation mechanisms implemented within an analog VLSI model of I&F neurons are functionally utilized for the purpose of network level stabilization. We present experimental data acquired both from the hardware model and from comparative software simulations which prove the applicability of the employed paradigm to neuromorphic VLSI devices

Working Document: Towards a vision for research, technology and innovation cooperation between Russia and the EU, its Member States and Associated States

This Working Document outlines development perspectives for cooperation in research, technology and innovation (RTI) between the EU, its Member States (MS), countries associated to the EU’s FP7 (AC), and Russia. The Working Document has been prepared in the framework of the ERA.Net RUS project and is based on a comprehensive foresight exercise implemented over the years 2010-2013 and on analysis of ongoing RTI cooperation. In-depth discussions among the ERA.Net RUS and ERA.Net RUS Plus consortiums and Funding Parties, and in the frame of expert workshops with policy makers and analysts provided essential input. Furthermore, results of other related projects (such as BILAT-RUS, BILAT-RUS Advanced, ACCESSRU, etc.) have been studied. The paper proposes a vision on enhancing the cooperation between EU MS/AC and Russia overall, as well as a specific follow-up vision for the ERA.Net RUS and ERA.Net RUS Plus projects.JRC.J.2-Knowledge for Growt