September 17, 2020

Martin successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “High precision measurements of magnetic fields and synchronization in optomechanical cavities” on 18th September, 2020 at ICN2. The work was under supervision of Dr. Daniel Navarro Urrios, Postdoctoral Researcher at Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures group and Dr Marius Costache, Senior Researcher at Physics and Engineering of Nanodevices group at ICN2. Congratulations to Martin and we wish all the best in his professional career.

August 18, 2020

Prof. Clivia Sotomayor has presented the work: "Thermal transport in the nanoscale: a study of Si and MoS2 nanostructure"as a plenary speaker in the “2020 Express Conference on the Physics of Materials and Their Applications in Energy Harvesting”, an Online event held from August 17 th to 19 th , 2020

August 06, 2020

The EU Project PHENOMEN (All-Phononic circuits Enabled by Opto-Mechanics), a H2020 FET OPEN funded project coordinated by the ICN2-P2N was evaluated as excellent by the European Commission. The consortium proved convincingly the feasibility of a phononic circuit working at room temperature using silicon compatible technologies. Here some excerpts from the evaluation report.

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“The reviewers unanimously agree the project has delivered “exceptional results with significant immediate or potential impact”.
We confirm that the outcome from the project, in terms of new understanding in physics of phonons and their possible outcomes definitively will influence the research community. The project has delivered several important results, both in terms of models and simulation tools development as in terms of new technology.”

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For more information about this project, you are welcome to view our consortium video

July 19, 2020

What does it mean to “make it” as a woman in research?
Prof. Clivia M. Sotomayor Torres shares her thoughts.

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Note highlighted in Optics and Photonics news magazine.  

June 22, 2020

Dr Alexandros El Sachat, postdoctoral researcher at the Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures Group, has received, at the proposal of the Academic Committee of the doctoral programme in Physics, the Special Award for Doctoral Studies (Premi Extraordinari de Doctorat), corresponding to academic year 2016-2017.

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The awards ceremony was scheduled for 22 May, but the declaration of the state of alarm due to the COVID-19 pandemic has postponed it without a date. As a consequence, the certificate has been sent to the awardees in digital format. Congratulations!

June 10, 2020

Congratulation to Dr. Ryan Cecil Ng for being awarded with this prestigious fellowship. During this project, we will explore novel designs for optomechanical nanostructures and develop experimental methods to address the phononic and photonic modes of nanoscale objects from free-space. Using embedded light emitting quantum dots we will avoid the limitations imposed by optical fibers currently used to bring light to the optomechanical cavity, which will in turn enable the incorporation of optically active materials in mechanical resonators and prepare them for up-scaling.

May 27, 2020

Prof. Clivia Sotomayor was asked to share the experience on preparing a successfully ERC advanced grant proposal. Here you can join this webinar.

May 27, 2020

Mysterious material properties are laying the groundwork for photon-electron channels communication devices: the TOCHA project

March 31, 2020

ICREA Prof. Dr Clivia Sotomayor Torres, leader of the ICN2 Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures Group, has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant to head a five-year project in which the interconnect energy-consumption challenge using an innovative approach will be investigated. Named LEIT, from “Lossless information for emerging information technologies”, this project will develop structures that allow taking advantage of phonon properties to transmit information using small amounts of energy.

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This is an excellent news for P2N group.

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November 21, 2019

Our recent published article: "A Self‐Assembled 2D Thermofunctional Material for Radiative Cooling" authored By J. Jaramillo-Fernandez has been recognized by several Spanish newspapers as scientific breakthrough in thermal management. Renowned newspaper as La Vanguardia and La Razón highlighted our research in their pages. In addition a local  TV channel (TV3) mentioned in its webpage. It is important to remark that the importance of  this kind of technologies has not gone unnoticed. Part of our team (J Jaramillo-Fernandez, A. Francone and N. Kehagias) have also developed another material that is easily up-scalable and is capable of providing both radiative cooling and self-cleaning. The Collider, a technology transfer program promoted by Mobile World Capital Barcelona that connects scientific research with entrepreneurial initiative, has awarded this project The Collider Tech Award 2019, a prize that encourages further development of this research line on radiative cooling materials. A European patent protecting the intellectual property rights of this technology was filed on 31 July 2019 by the ICN2 and ICREA.

November 17, 2019

Researchers from the ICN2 and the ICMM-CSIC have developed a new material able to cool another one by emitting infrared radiation. The results are published in Small and are expected to be used in devices where an increase in temperature has drastic effects on performance, like solar panels and computer systems, among other applications.

A way out of this loop has been found by researchers from the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) in collaboration with researchers from the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM-CSIC). Members of the ICN2 P2N Group, led by ICREA Prof. Dr Clivia M. Sotomayor Torres, and the ICMM Photonic Crystals Group have reported a novel two-dimensional material able to remove heat, cooling down the surface in which it is placed without energy consumption or gas emissions of any kind. The work has been published in Small, with Dr Juliana Jaramillo-Fernández, who is a Marie Slodowska-Curie COFUND Postdoctoral Researcher at the ICN2, as its first author.

August 18, 2019

Independent optomechanical nano-oscillators vibrate in sync

From the Huygens pendulum clocks in the seventeenth century onwards, the synchronization of coupled oscillators has had numerous practical uses. While most of these applications have been in mechanical and electrical engineering, nowadays there is increasing focus on applications in biology and neuroscience. With the development of nanotechnologies, scientists’ efforts have centred on synchronizing oscillatory nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), for applications such as on-chip time keeping, and mass, gas, and force sensors.

July 22, 2019

A special session on Nanophonics and nanomechancis, organized by Pedro David Garcia (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia - ICN2, Spain) and Daniel Lanzillotti-Kimura (Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanostructures - C2N, France) was held at META 2019 – Lisbon to discuss recent development of this research field.

From July 23 – 26 July, the 10th edition of the International Conference on Metamaterials, Photonic Crystals and Plasmonics (META) took place at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, (Portugal). A special session on nanophotonics and nanomechanics was organized by Dr. Pedro David García Fernandez of the ICN2 Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures group and Dr. Daniel Lanzilotti-Kimura from the CNRS (France).

July 25, 2019

Congratulation to María del Rocio Rodriguez who defended his Ph.D. thesis successfully. Her research focused on the thermal properties of graphene-based nanofluids and multicationic molten salts. This work explored the mechanisms behind of the enhancement of the thermal conductivity in nanofluids as well as look for the conditions to decrease the melting point in complex molten salts. The work was carried out as a part of Severo Ochoa joint project under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Clivia Sotomayor and Dr. Emigdio Chávez-Angel from P2N group and  Prof. Dr. Pedro Gomez-Romero from NEO group.

July 17, 2019

Last 8 July, at the Pier 01 Barcelona Tech City, Dr Juliana Jaramillo and Cristina Morales, from the ICN2 P2N Group collected The Collider Tech Award 2019. The prize was awarded to the “Radiative Cooling” project, conceived and developed by Dr Juliana Jaramillo (Marie-Slodowska-Curie P-SPHERE fellow), Dr Achille Francone and Dr Nikolaos Kehagias, all of them from the P2N Group led by ICREA Prof. Clivia M. Sotomayor Torres. The project was among the 15 awarded initiatives selected from a long list of over 150 candidates.

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The invention deals with the cooling of a surface or device when a hybrid microstructure is applied on its exterior surface. In particular, they have developed and demonstrated a dual functionality micro-structured film which provides both passive radiative cooling and self-cleaning. The approach is adaptable to many devices, and could be integrated directly on a surface requiring cooling and/or as a large area adhesive film on a surface requiring cooling and self-cleaning. This dual functionality is of particular interest for applications such as photovoltaic panels, which need a clean surface and an optimal temperature for maximum performance.

June 30, 2019

Daniel Navarro-Urrios from the University of Barcelona (visiting professor of P2N group) and colleagues have replicate the synchronization of two couple pendulums using nanoscaled optomechanical resonators. Their findings shows that the network of these nano-oscillators could act as a tunable system for studying problems related to collective dynamics of pendulum-like objects.

The experiment consisted in the fabrication of two similar optomechanical resonators connected via a tin wire in their extremes. This connection provided a mechanical link between the oscillators, mimicking the original pendulum synchronization experiment of Huygen.

The modification of the “swinging” of each "pendulum" was set by using an external laser. This action caused each "pendulum" to produce oscillatory optical and mechanical signals analogous to the repeated ticks of a clock. The signals from the two initially unsynchronized crystals quickly synced up, with their “swings” moving in antiphase, meaning that the signal from one oscillator was the mirror image of the other.

These findings shown the first “unambiguously” synchronization of two optomechanical cavities.

June 26, 2019

Dr. P.D. García  together with Dr. Jacopo Bertolotti from Exeter Uni. (UK) has organized a session at PIERS – Rome on disordered photonics which included topics ranging from imaging, focusing and computing with light in complex media, random lasing or light-matter interaction in non-periodic dielectric nanostructures with great international invited speakers as Prof. Hui Cao (Yale University), Prof. Sylvain Gigan (École Normale Supérieure, Paris), Dr. Riccardo Sapienza (Imperial College London) or Prof. Massimo Gurioli (Università di Firenze). Understanding and engineering the interaction of light with complex dielectric is of great interest for applications such as improving the efficiency of energy harvesting and on the analysis and exploration of biological tissues.

June 13, 2019

Integration of multiple disciplines and varied fields of expertise has historically spurred tremendous growth and advances that would not be otherwise possible. The NANOARCHITECTRONICS project is at the forefront of the next great fusion. Take a look to the final report and main results.

May 19, 2019

Prof. Dr. Clivia Sotomayor-Torres and Dr. Marianna Sledzinska of the ICN2’s Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures Group have been awarded the MIT-Spain “La Caixa” Foundation Seed Fund research grant. The 12 projects that will be included in this year Programme were presented this morning in Barcelona.

May 15, 2019

Physicists have proposed a novel approach to confine light and sound waves at the same place using an approximately periodic nanoscale stack of two materials. They not only show that light and sound can be co-localized, but also show a subsequent enhancement of their interaction. This work is a collaboration between the Centre de nanosciences et nanotechnologies (C2N, CNRS/Univ. Paris-Sud) and P2N group from ICN2.

April 01, 2019

The ICREA research professors Aurelio Juste (IFAE-UAB), Clivia Sotomayor (ICN2-UAB), and Antonio Acín (ICFO-UPC) will discuss the technology that has been developed thanks to quantum physics while also considering the point we are at now with regard to a new technological revolution.

March 31, 2019

The article entitled “Coherent generation and detection of acoustic phonons in topological nanocavities” has been selected to be on the cover of APL Photonics, Volume 4 Issue 3.

March 07, 2019

NANOPOLY proposes a ground-breaking yet cost effective method to extend our control over impedance and parasitic phenomena in monolithic circuit components by independently tuning electric permittivity and magnetic permeability of the integrated layers to values far beyond what nature can provide. This approach will re-define all components used in existing analogue circuit design regardless of technology. NANOPOLY will implement this concept on existing technology such as SiGe and will also employ novel two dimensional materials characterized by high mobility in order to complement minimal thickness and transferability with impedance engineering obtaining unprecedented performance of electronic components.

The NanoPoly consortium is made up from 8 partners from 6 countries including 6 research institutes (P2N, ICN2) and universities, and 2 subsidiaries of a major industry

March 05, 2019

The evolutionary path of contemporary wireless communication systems to future ones is twofold. On the one hand it relies on the continuous enhancement of terrestrial cellular communications network such as 4G into 5G and on the other hand on the transition from present satellite communications (Satcom) networks as for instance the Inmarsat (1) to emerging satellite megaconstellation such as Oneweb (2) . In both cases the priority is to increase the service capacity and bridge the so called societal or geographical digital gap. There are plenty of open critical ICT issues at software/data processing level (protocol, spectrum, waveforms management and optimization) and at hardware level. The latter is far more critical as it requires a heavier infrastructural investment and poses tougher technological challenges to be solved.

The NanoSmart consortium is made up from 10 partners from 7 countries including 7 research institutes (P2N, ICN2) and universities, 2 SMEs and 1 subsidiaries of a major industry.

February 12, 2019

Sound and light are crucial for our life and represent the core in many energy, communication and information technologies. Their interaction allows many fundamental observations in Physics. However, their interaction is subtle and weak. Enhancing their interaction requires confining both waves at the same place which is a considerable technological challenge. In nanotechnology, this has been solved by creating cavities relying on very carefully fabricated patterns. This approach is demanding and easily disturbed by disorder and defects. In a work recently published in Physical Review Letters a fully different approach is proposed, where symmetry and periodicity are not needed, and disorder is embraced. The work has been done in close collaboration with Dr. Daniel Lanzillotti-Kimura, a researcher at CNRS in France. The first author of the work is Guillermo Arregui and the last one is Dr Pedro David García, both from the ICN2 Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures Group led by ICREA Prof. Dr. Clivia M. Sotomayor-Torres.

Order, symmetry and periodicity are words that have always thrilled researchers. For physicists, the appeal is that regular systems tend to obey simple (or at least symmetric) laws. Even complex systems are simplified in their description, which helps understanding their underlying mechanisms. However, the world is complex. However, understanding the inherent complexity of nature ultimately requires departing from perfect symmetry and periodicity. Remarkably, as the authors show in this work, disorder and complexity can be exploited as a resource instead of being treated just as an unavoidable annoyance. In the recently published work, disorder is used to simultaneously localize sound and light at the nanoscale.

January 24, 2019

This document has been written by the project partners according to the discussion and consultation process organized by the project NEREID. It is anchored in the grand technological challenges in information processing, communications, based on memory and logic devices, circuits and architectures with a view to the time when CMOS scaling begins to loose some ground. The document was compiled by the EU H2020 ICT project NEREID, based on presentations and discussions during the workshop series held between November 2015 and August 2018.

November 28, 2018

PHENOMEN project will be present in 2018 International Workshop on Sound Enabled Nanotechnologies (IWSENT). IWSENT is a joint effort by the European-funded projects SAWtrain and PHENOMEN aiming at gathering leading scientists from all over the world working in the emerging field of high frequency vibrations in semiconductor and related materials, with special focus on surface acoustic waves (SAWs), opto-mechanics, high-frequency phonons, and their applications. The dynamic modulation of semiconductor structures by high frequency vibrations provides a powerful tool for the control of the materials properties required for novel functionalities in nanophotonics, nanoelectronics, and quantum information processing. Of special interest are SAWs: these vibrations with GHz frequencies and micrometer-size wavelengths can be generated on a semiconductor chip with standard integrated circuit technology.

November 12, 2018

PHENOMEN project will be present in a common space with FET PROACTIVE project HOT, in the ICT2018 event, organized by the European Commission and the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. This is an event open to the citizens, where the science community members, policy makers and stakeholders and discuss about the digital future of Europe. Come and visit us in Vienna from the 4th to 6th of December at the stand “HOT & PHENOMEN”.

October 27, 2018

Professor Clivia Sotomayor was nominated by ATV, the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences. The board consists of nine members, whom must possess insight into research at an international level. The Minister for Higher Education and Science appoints the chair and one ordinary member without external nomination. The seven remaining members of the board are appointed by the Minister of Science, Innovation and Higher Education following the nominations of The Independent Research Fund Denmark, The Danish Rectors’ Conference, the Joint Committee of Directors at Governmental Research Institutes, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences.

As a DNRF board member, Professor Sotomayor looks forward to contributing to the continuation of the proud Danish science tradition and to following the developments in Danish research.

November 18, 2018

This PhD school is dedicated to latest theoretical and practical research advances teaching sessions in these fields. It will consist of both lectures and seminar talks by world-class specialists who have joined the NTX European action. A special event on “How to control waves with time materials” will be given by Professor Mathias FINK. Attendees are also invited to present a poster if they wish (it is highly recommended!), as there will be a poster session organized to exchange research expertise in multidisciplinary areas and to boost collaborative initiatives in a friendly atmosphere. Among the invited lecturers, Dr. Francesc Alzina (P2N member) will give a plenary talk about Optomechanics and phononics.

October 23, 2018

Disperse graphene in a organic solvent and the resulting nanofluid will have much better thermal properties than the original liquid. Three ICN2 research groups (including P2N) collaborate to describe and explain this effect from the inside out. The results, published in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Nanoscale, provide a comprehensive analysis that alternately rules out and lends support to different existing theories as to the mechanisms driving the enhanced thermal conductivity and heat exchange found in nanofluids, bringing considerable insight into the field of thermal transport in dynamic systems.

In a paper, titled “Mechanisms behind the enhancement of thermal properties of graphene nanofluids” and published in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Nanoscale, researchers from three ICN2 groups have joined forces to shed some light on the matter. Lead author PhD student María del Rocío Rodríguez Laguna of ICN2 NEO and P2N Groups reports how they use a book-example system to look at the interactions between the graphene nanoflakes and fluid molecules in graphene-amide nanofluids. Specifically, they looked at the influence of graphene concentration on thermal conductivity, heat capacity, sound velocity and Raman spectra.

October 21, 2018

The 2nd BIST Postdoctoral Day aims to improve communication and networking among postdoctoral researchers from the seven BIST centers. Join us for a day centered on career development, with stimulating discussions and intimate breakout sessions with leaders in a broad spectrum of scientific professions including academia, industry, entrepreneurship, scientific communication, global science and philanthropy. This event is organized by several BIST members.

August 02, 2018

ICREA Prof. Clivia M. Sotomayor Torres, leader of the ICN2 Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures Group, was one of the six keynote speakers at the 18th IEEE International Conference on Nanotechnology. Held in Cork (Ireland) from 23 to 26 July, the scope of this annual conference spans the breadth of nanoscience and nanotechnology, from fundamentals in nano materials, fabrication and characterisation to the development of nano sensors, actuators and nano electronic and photonic devices.

The keynote speech delivered by ICREA Prof. Clivia M. Sotomayor Torres was held right after the opening ceremony on 24 July. Her speech titled “Nanophononics: pushing a frontier in nanoscience and nanotechnology” gave an overview of the state-of-the-art in phononics research and applications. In it she reviewed opto-electronics, thermal management, coherence of wave-based state variables, optical phonon-photon interactions, phononic circuits and other emerging areas of research, all based on the extensive experimental work she leads at the ICN2. Nanophononics research might change the concept of information technologies as we know them today.

July 16, 2018

Researches and supervisors met on the 7th of July 2018, at the P-Sphere (COFUND, Marie S. Curie actions) project day to share their experience in the field of research.

The project has 49 international researchers from different centers of the Sphere-UAB.

Juliana Jaramillo Fernandez, from the P2N group, shares her experiences and outcomes within the P-Sphere project in a dissemination video. Check it out!

July 05, 2018

Congratulation to Blanca Puertas from Universitat de Lleida who defended her "TFG" thesis successfully. Her research explored novel techniques for authentication of olive oils based on thermal conductivity, sound velocity, Luminescence and Raman spectroscopy.

The work was carried out as a part of a project of Dr. Emigdio Chávez-Ángel in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Robert Soliva from Universitat de Lleida, Lleida, Spain.

June 28, 2018

Congratulation to Arindom Chatterjee who defended his Ph.D. thesis successfully.His research focused on the TE properties of some of the corner shared and edge shared CoO2 layered compounds, like GdBaCo2O5.5 double perovskite and misfit layer BiSrCoO, respectively. This work explores the conditions for the thin film deposition by pulsed laser evaporation, as well as their orientation and microstructure, in order to attain optimum thin film quality and control over the oxygen stoichiometry and epitaxial strain. Thermopower analysis of the thin films indicates that polaron size distribution is an important factor which needs to be taken into account in the classical Heike’s formula to optimize thermopower. This is a different approach than convensional band-structure engineering and therefore, modification of Heike’s formula is proposed. The work was carried out as a part of a project of Prof. Dr. Clivia Sotomayor and Prof. Dr. José Santiso López within the Severo Ochoa joint project.

May 02, 2018

2DNanoHeat aims to open up this potential, based on the collective expertise of four BIST research groups: two groups from ICFO (Niek van Hulst’s group and Frank Koppens’ group) and two from ICN2 (Sergio Valenzuela’s group and Clivia Sotomayor Torres’ group). Jointly, these groups have a truly unique combination of expertise in i) nanofabrication and growth of layered materials; ii) studying phononic heat transport; and iii) ultrafast techniques to probe electronic (heat) transport. We will employ this specific know-how to develop a new class of thermoelectric and photodetection devices based on 2D layered materials.

February 05, 2018

An article by the ICN2 Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures Group, led by ICREA Research Prof. Dr Clivia M. Sotomayor-Torres, is highlighted in the section “Materials: properties, characterization or tools”. The section is conceived for original concise and comprehensive articles across all disciplines, reporting the measurement of properties intrinsic to the nanoscale, the techniques devised to characterise materials at this scale, and computer modelling.

The selected ICN's article reports on the structural, compositional and thermal characterisation of self-assembled in-plane epitaxial Si1−xGex alloy nanowires grown via molecular beam epitaxy on Si (001) substrates. The article explores thermal properties, microstructural characteristics and the morphology of in-plane nanostructures. These results provide valuable information on growth processes and show case the capability of scanning thermal microscopy (SThM) in ambient conditions for nanoscale thermal studies, not possible using conventional techniques.

December 11, 2017

The project Nanoplastics, launched by researchers at the Catalan Institute for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), the Institute for Neurosciences (INC-UAB) and the Centre for Agronomic Research (CRAG), has created a single-layer biodegradable film to increase safety of packaged and extend their shelf life.

The project was coordinated by Dr. Achille Francone, postdoctoral researcher at the ICN2 Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures Group; Natalia de la Oliva, from the Institute for Neurosciences (INC UAB); and Ana Beatriz and Tarik Ruiz Medina, from the Centre for Agronomic Research (CRAG). Nadia Pons, from the ICN2 Business Developer of the ICN2 Strategic Development Office, and Cristina Morales, Scientific Group Administrator at the awarded ICN2 Group, also attended the event.

July 25, 2017

Earlier this month was the ICN2’s third Severo Ochoa Scientific Workshop, an event that brought together researchers from all career stages and all of the institute’s research groups to share progress in their respective fields of study. We were also joined by top influencers in innovation and technology transfer in Spain and beyond.

The event was brought to a close by Prof. Pablo Ordejón in the form of an awards ceremony, not only for the three Best Elevator Pitches Achille Francone (P2N member), Daniel Quesada and Ramón García, but also for the three Best Posters: our congratulations go to Andrea P. Bonaccini, Blanca Chocarro and Rocío Rodríguez (P2N member), who each won €1200 to go towards travel expenses for an international conference of their choosing. Their poster presentations will also be available for viewing over the coming weeks.

July 05, 2017

ICREA Research Professor Dr Clivia Sotomayor and leader of the ICN2 Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures Group is extremely honoured to be the next co-chair of the Future and Emerging Technologies Advisory Group, together with Prof. Dermot Diamond of the National Centre for Sensor Research in Dublin, Ireland.

The Future and Emerging Technologies Advisory Group (FETAG) was established to provide the European Commission consistent and consolidated advice during the preparation of Horizon 2020 work programmes, with a view to ensuring and maximising the impact of radically new emerging technologies on science, society, technology and innovation.

ICREA Research Prof. Dr Clivia Sotomayor will take the leading chair role in the first year, reversing roles with Prof. Dermot Diamond for the second year. She is extremely honoured by the trust placed in her to represent the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme at European level.

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Information via: Digital Excellence & Science Infrastructure newsletter.